From Wondering, I'm Lindsey Graham and this is American Scandal.

In 2011, Pennsylvania judges Mark Chivorella and Michael Conahan were sentenced to federal prison for their roles in a scheme that came to be known as Kids for Cash.

Chivorella and Conahan had used their positions in county court to help construct a new juvenile detention center.

At the same time, the judges made sure the facility would have a steady stream of business, including children only guilty of committing minor offenses.

The two judges earned large fees for their involvement in the project, as well as another facility that opened soon after.

But their fortunes would soon take a turn.

Chivorella and Conahan stood accused of personally profiting by sending children to jail, and prosecutors soon charged the judges with a wide range of federal crimes.

In the end, Conahan was given a sentence of 17 and a half years. Chivorella was sentenced to 28 years.

But while their punishment came as a relief to many of their former victims, some argued it wasn't enough that the scandal revealed a need for large reforms in juvenile justice, both in Pennsylvania and across the country.

My guest today is Bill Ackinbarger, a journalist and author of the book Kids for Cash, which offers a definitive account of the judge's kickback scheme.

Ackinbarger has reported extensively on Pennsylvania politics, and in 1980 he was part of a team of reporters that won a Pulitzer Prize after covering the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.

We're going to be discussing an often overlooked segment of America's population of jailed inmates, the children being held in juvenile detention.

We'll also look at the reforms currently underway in Pennsylvania, which are reshaping the state's juvenile justice system and could offer a model for the rest of the country.

Our conversation is next.

Bill Ackinbarger, welcome to American scandal.

My pleasure, then.

So let's start our conversation with getting a scope of the issue at hand. Maybe some numbers would help. Right now, how many children are incarcerated in juvenile detention centers throughout the United States?

Well, according to the federal authorities, there are about 25,000 kids incarcerated in the United States today.

Now, there will be about the same number tomorrow, but they won't be the same kids and differ the next day and next day.

So that over a period of a year, you have a lot more kids incarcerated than 25,000. Now, how's that number in recent years gone up or down?

It's going down. It was up around 100,000 about 25 years ago, but that's going to happen for a number of reasons. Bailey, many states have seen it is very expensive.

Well, let's continue to peel back these numbers a bit. These tens, if not hundreds of thousands of children, what kind of crimes are they accused of?

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