Yes, sometimes there are corrupt judges. Note that the article doesn't say whether the owners of the detention centers approached the judges or whether the judges approached them. Both sides had to be evil (and know the other side was evil) for the scandal to happen.
If you read more into the cash for kids scandal, you'll see it was the tip of the iceberg. The level of nepotism in Luzerne county was absurd and the state did nothing to fix it. There were judges abusing their positions, using staff for personal errands, showing blatant bias against certain attorneys, fixing cases, etc. By the time the FBI was done, around a half dozen judges in the county were convicted of various offenses.
My takeaway from the whole thing was that judges have too much power and too little oversight. They're the one relic of the royalty/nobility system that we kept after the American revolution.
If you read more into the cash for kids scandal, you'll see it was the tip of the iceberg. The level of nepotism in Luzerne county was absurd and the state did nothing to fix it. There were judges abusing their positions, using staff for personal errands, showing blatant bias against certain attorneys, fixing cases, etc. By the time the FBI was done, around a half dozen judges in the county were convicted of various offenses.
My takeaway from the whole thing was that judges have too much power and too little oversight. They're the one relic of the royalty/nobility system that we kept after the American revolution.