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Don’t forget the 2008 kids for cash scandal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal. At least those judges were eventually tried and are serving time.

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Convicted in 2011, disbarred in 2019. The guild will go to great lengths to protect their most guilty.

It takes years for a conviction to become finalized. He was temporarily suspended in April 2012, while he appealed his conviction. The Third Circuit denied his habeas petition on March 2019. He was disbarred in October 2019. http://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/DisciplinaryBoard/out....

Is there a reason why they can't be disbarred upon conviction, and then reinstated if the appeal goes through? After all, it's not like you can avoid prison time while your conviction goes through the appeal process.

The temporary suspension accomplishes the same purpose. Either way you can't practice law while you're appealing, which is the only punishment the bar can mete out.

> After all, it's not like you can avoid prison time while your conviction goes through the appeal process

You can, though it's not very common, and, in the US, it's not available in all jurisdictions.

See, e.g., https://www.justia.com/criminal/bail-bonds/bail-while-pursui...

Don't forget that disbarment is not permanent in a majority of states.

Disbarment is quite literally the permanent revocation of your license to practice law in a jurisdiction. In most jurisdictions, if you have been disbarred, you can never practice law there again unless you disbarment is overturned, which generally requires a court order following a lengthy appeals process.

As a practical matter, the number of lawyers who get reinstated each year numbers in the single digits or low double digits.

Nonsense. You even contradicted yourself, first writing that disbarment is "quite literally the permanent revocation of your license" after which you start to describe how you think reinstatement works.

"Permanent" and "disbarment" don't go together the way most people assume they do. When the public reads that Attorney Bob got caught doing Bad Things and was disbarred, they assume that down the road if they hire an attorney (or receive PD services), the Bad Guy is not in the running.

A 2007 paper titled "Should Permanent Disbarment be Permanent?" published in The Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics provides a good overview of just how impermanent 'permanent disbarment' is.

Its author found that "Five states mandate that all disbarments be treated as permanent. Eight states allow for disbarments to be permanent in some situations. In these states, when disbarment is not permanent, readmittance can either be applied for in seven years, five years, or at any time, depending on the jurisdiction. . . . The remaining 35 states and DC have no procedure for permanent disbarment." Of course, there's also the matter that not all states have 'disbarment in any other jurisdiction' as a disqualifier. Disbarred? Maybe it's time for a move?

Joseph O'Malley is best known for his 2013 "indefinite disbarment" after the now-former prosecutor was charged with nine violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct arising from his improper influencing of a judge, and his August 2011 convictions in an Ohio federal court for misprision of a felony and making a materially false statement in a matter within the jurisdiction of the federal government. O'Malley's 2013 disbarment generated a lot of press. Know what no one reported anywhere? That he was reinstated in 2016. He was recently appointed as public defender for a cop who was arrested for OVI. (Adjudicated not guilty on that charge.)

As a practical matter, the number of reinstated lawyers each year is not even remotely close to as low as you claim. I just now looked at the data for a handful of states and I'm already way over your upper end. It's more like "In any given state, annual figures are in the single to low double digits" — with a few much larger outliers.

The whole thing there can be reduced to the observation: why does society let foster care and youth protective services exist?

You might say "well to protect kids". Except, there's a massive body of research proving that they make things worse, certainly on average:

https://sci-hub.se/10.1257/aer.97.5.1583

Massive negative effects, from reading scores, to later earnings, to subjective happiness (yes, really, kids report more happiness while being abused than in youth services), to later crimes.

So no youth protection is better for everyone. This is obvious in the case of scandals and the many "accidents". But it is true in general. And it is true for everyone. No child protection is better for the kid, for families (obviously I guess), and due to the increase in crime if we destroyed youth protection causes, it is better for society itself. If you start checking, you will find that youth protection is involved in the raising of many of the worst criminals we've ever known.

Even child psychiatry and "special needs schools" ... well. Comparing symptoms upon entry and symptoms upon exit paints a very clear picture that really questions why they're allowed to exist.

https://sci-hub.se/https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007...

And then of course there's the many scandals that these people keep and keep and keep producing. Abuse within foster families is higher than in families in youth protection services. In institutions it is a lot higher.

So they don't protect kids.

And crimes are astronomically higher in both foster care and institutional care (and youth psychiatry).

So they don't protect society against those kids either.

So where is a child supposed to go when their parents have died or been imprisoned? Should they just be homeless? What alternative do you envision?

Ideally parents agree this with somebody appropriate in advance. Like end of life planning it's something that people are told to do, but most don't bother.

If my parents had both died during my childhood we knew we'd live with our cousins Catherine and Victoria. If somehow we didn't come with a pile of money (from insurance paying out or other mechanisms that fire when two child-rearing age people suddenly die) things would have been very tight for my Uncle and his wife but we'd have family.

This is a big aspect of structural racism tbh. The disproportionate incarceration (duration and frequency) of black and indigenous people dumps a lot of their kids into the foster system. These kids overwhelmingly get sucked into the school-to-prison pipeline, around and around it goes. Relatively lucky ones have a family member, but they probably can't afford another kid, and the cycle of poverty keeps turning.

That is much less than 1% of the kids in youth services. A bit like saying we must have a million nuclear weapons in case there's another cold war in 200 years.

The answer to this question doesn't really matter for that reason.

The vast majority of kids are in foster care because otherwise their parents would be "unreachable" for social workers, for various reasons, like refusing psych treatment for their kid that the school insists on, like autism treatment for "difficult" children, sometimes just because they can't because treatment can only happen during working hours, but the parents need to work. Meaning they are hostages to "force change". That group is huge. Next largest group are kids suspected of a crime. Keep in mind that the way our law works kids don't have any legal rights. They may be convicted of a crime but for kids there is no difference between suspected and convicted.

The thing is, with just kids in youth services that really NEED to be somewhere the current system cannot possibly survive.

Child protection is like a loaded gun sitting on a table waiting for someone to pick it up. Anyone who doesn't like you or the way you raise your kids can phone in a trumped-up complaint and send investigators in your home to see if your child needs to be taken away and put into a lowest-bidder archipelago of foster homes and group facilities. Disgusting all around to me.

I have actually been a foster parent, and have had kids come to my house at 11pm, that you can smell from 7 feet away, covered in lice, with a single backpack with all their possesions. One kid called 911 because mom and dad wouldn't wake up (heroin). Some suffering from Sex Abuse, some literally starving, etc. Yes, Foster Care has its problems (and part of why I don't do it anymore) but there ARE legitimate needs in the communities. I would love to know what you think it should be replaced with?

They exist as good intentions which are then controlled by busy-bodies who destine lives to feed from state-administered family planning (I'd consider this in the same category as public welfare).

In this particular example of the mother being in prison, where would the children live without these services?

The best answer for that question is in 99% of cases (light offenders) also in prison (not locked up. With the mother still taking them to school, ideally the same school). There's research that this is both the best for the child and a very effective way to reduce recidivism.

And let's not forget that there really aren't that many effective ways to reduce recidivism, so this ought to be worth a lot to society.

Generally carrots work a LOT better than sticks.

I think we all agree that in this case the mother - who is a light offender - should not have gotten such a harsh sentence. Your vision of the mother being with the child effectively means that the mother gets a lighter sentence. But sadly that's not the case here... so you're either saying we should abolish hard sentences to light offenders (or maybe just those with children?), or you're not really answering the question.

I think he's talking about systems where the child actually lives in the same facility as the parent.

Such programs exist, in a limited way: https://www.npr.org/2018/12/06/663516573/programs-help-incar...

I see you citing a study that appears to be about the inadequacy of the USA system. You could read that and decide it means the whole system is inherently broken, but you could just as easily see that as an indictment of the US system and a need for reform or a replacement with the parts that work better in other countries.

Yeah, how much of this is just the same problems as the US huge prison population, but applied to children? The "carcerial state".

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