The White House commuted the sentence of the judge at the center of a notorious “kids-for-cash” scandal without considering the specifics of his case, beyond whether it fit into a broad set of criteria, an administration official told POLITICO on Friday.
President Joe Biden this week granted clemency to the former Pennsylvania judge, Michael Conahan, as part of a mass commutation covering nearly 1,500 people who had been released on home confinement during the Covid pandemic.
Conahan’s inclusion sparked harsh blowback, with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro criticizing Biden for getting it “absolutely wrong.”
“I do feel strongly that President Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain here in northeastern Pennsylvania,” Shapiro, a Democrat, said at an event on Friday. Conahan “deserves to be behind bars, not walking as a free man.”
Conahan was convicted in 2011 of funneling juveniles to for-profit detention centers in exchange for more than $2 million in kickbacks. He was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison after pleading guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges.
At the time, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania called the scandal “the worst in Pennsylvania’s history,” forcing the state to vacate thousands of juvenile convictions.
But the White House did not consider any of those details when weighing the charges against Conahan or the cases of other individuals who received commutations on Thursday, said the administration official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the clemency process. Instead, the administration granted commutations en masse to all those who fit a broader set of parameters, touting the move as a record-setting act of mercy carried out just before the holidays.
Those commutations were extended to people on Covid-related home confinement after federal authorities verified that their offenses were nonviolent and not a sex offense or terrorism related, the official said. They were also all considered a low risk for recidivism, had not engaged in any violent or gang-related activity while in prison and had been on good behavior for at least a year. None of the commutations granted were individual decisions, the official added, and none who met the criteria were excluded.
The administration official defended the commutations for Conahan and others as a sign of Biden’s commitment to second chances, rather than a commentary on the president’s opinion of their original offenses.
Still, the official downplayed the impact on Conahan’s sentence in particular, arguing that he had served the bulk of his sentence, was already on home confinement and likely would have been released in August 2026 without the commutation.
Some victims of the “kids-for-cash” scandal have publicly criticized Biden in the wake of Conahan’s commutation. Amanda Lorah, who was one of the juveniles wrongly imprisoned in the scheme, told a local television station that the move amounted to “a big slap in the face for us once again.”
Sandy Fonzo, whose son died by suicide after Conahan placed him in juvenile detention, said in a statement to the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, newspaper Citizens’ Voice that she was “shocked and I am hurt.”
“Conahan’s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son’s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power,” she said.
