While the issues of criminal justice and prison reform garner bipartisan steam, the Obama administration’s decision last week to draw down federal use of private prisons amounts to little more than a fig leaf that further ensconces the power of corrections unions without alleviating the root causes of our hyper-incarcerated society. The episode illuminates many of the unintended consequences of progressive attempts to reduce incarceration, but these attempts ignore the strongest trigger of poverty and incarceration: the breakdown of the nuclear family.  By removing private involvement in the corrections system, the Department of Justice is yielding that much more power to public sector unions, which are inherently biased against accountability for prisoner abuse. Like the “rubber rooms” of teachers unions enabling incompetent — and sometimes abusive — teachers to retain their employment and paychecks, so to do corrections unions shield rotten officers from justice for their crimes against prisoners (the sort of horrors uncovered by The New York Times on Rikers Island). Corruption among these unions abounds; just this summer, the Federal Bureau of investigations arrested Norman Seabrook, a power broker who headed the New York City correction officers’ union, on charges of fraud. The FBI caught Seabrook with a…
See original post: Private Prisons Don’t Solve Incarceration & Boost Corrupt Union Bosses