ALLENTOWN — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed thousands of juvenile convictions issued by a judge charged in a corruption scandal, saying that none of the young offenders got a fair hearing.

The high court on Thursday threw out more than five years' worth of juvenile cases heard by disgraced former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella, who is charged with accepting millions of dollars in kickbacks to send youths to private detention centers.

The Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which represents some of the youths, said the court's order covers as many as 6,500 cases. The justices barred any possibility of retrial in all but a fraction of them.

"This is exactly the relief these kids needed," said Marsha Levick, the center's legal director. "It's the most serious judicial corruption scandal in our history and the court took an extraordinary step in addressing it."

Children routinely appeared in front of Ciavarella without lawyers for hearings that lasted only a few minutes. Ciavarella also failed to question young defendants to make sure they fully understood the consequences of waiving counsel and pleading guilty, showing "complete disregard for the constitutional rights of the juveniles," the Supreme Court said. After being found delinquent, the youths were often shackled and taken to private jails whose owner was allegedly paying bribes. Federal prosecutors have said that Ciavarella and another Luzerne County judge, Michael Conahan, took a total of $2.8 million in payoffs.

"Ciavarella's admission that he received these payments, and that he failed to disclose his financial interests arising from the development of the juvenile facilities, thoroughly undermines the integrity of all juvenile proceedings before Ciavarella," the Supreme Court said.

The judges pleaded guilty in February to honest services fraud and tax evasion in a deal with prosecutors that called for a sentence of 87 months in prison. But the deal was rejected in August by Senior U.S. District Judge Edward M. Kosik, who said the two hadn't fully accepted responsibility for the crimes, and the ex-judges switched their pleas to not guilty.

A federal grand jury then returned a 48-count racketeering indictment against the judges, who await trial.