In the March 20 issue of National Review, Philip Howard wrote a piece adapted from his book, Not Accountable, about how public-sector unions cause basic governance problems. (I’ll have a Capital Writing interview with Howard coming out soon.)

“Accountability is basically nonexistent in American government today,” Howard began that piece. “Blatant misconduct rarely leads to speedy dismissal; instead it is just the starting point for negotiation,” he said.

One recent example of this phenomenon came from New York’s state prisons. On May 19, the New York Times reported:

Shattered teeth. Punctured lungs. Broken bones. Over a dozen years, New York State officials have documented the results of attacks by hundreds of prison guards on the people in their custody.

But when the state corrections department has tried to use this evidence to fire guards, it has failed 90 percent of the time, an investigation by The Marshall Project has found.

The review of prison disciplinary records dating to 2010 found more than 290 cases in which the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision tried to fire officers or supervisors it said physically abused prisoners or covered up mistreatment that ranged from group beatings to withholding food. The agency considered these employees a threat to the safety and security of prisons.

Yet officers were ousted in just 28 cases. The state tried to fire one guard for using excessive force in three separate incidents within three years — and failed each time. He remains on the state prisons payroll.

Firing 28 workers is actually a lot compared with the handling of other unionized public employees. “California, with 300,000 teachers, is able to terminate two or three per year for poor performance,” Howard wrote.

The details from New York’s prisons are horrifying. For example:

An officer who broke his baton hitting a prisoner 35 times, even after the man was handcuffed, was not fired. Neither were the guards who beat a prisoner at Attica Correctional Facility so badly that he needed 13 staples to close gashes in his scalp. Nor were the officers who battered a mentally ill man, injuring him from face to groin. The man hanged himself the next day.

Why do most of these guards keep their jobs? Public-sector unions:

A key reason the prison system finds it so hard to get rid of guards is the contract the state signed in 1972 with the union. The agreement requires any effort to fire an officer to go through binding arbitration, using an outside arbitrator hired by the union and the state — a system the union has successfully kept in subsequent contracts. Only a court can overturn arbitration decisions.

In abuse cases, the arbitrators ruled in favor of officers three-quarters of the time, according to a review of nearly 120 decisions by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization. Arbitrators, most of whom are lawyers, often said the state’s evidence was insufficient or found prisoners’ testimony unconvincing.

Rather than go to arbitration, the state sometimes withdraws charges, or officers choose to resign or retire. Guards accused of abuse are often suspended without pay — a three-month suspension is most common, the analysis found.

Of course, the New York Times would likely be more hesitant to clearly outline the dangers of public-sector unions if the story was about teachers rather than correctional workers. But the principle is the same. Public-sector unions essentially have the right to bargain against the public, and they exercise it constantly.

The story notes that in 2018, “Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed legislation to give the corrections commissioner the power to dismiss officers, but the plan withered under opposition from the Assembly and Senate.” A radical idea: The head of a government agency should have the power to fire government employees working in that agency. But the corrections commissioner isn’t really in charge of the corrections department when a union contract negotiated years ago dictates what he can and can’t do to reform the organization he purportedly leads.

That’s Howard’s overall point: that governments have delegated their power to public-sector unions, which then exercise government power without the accountability mechanisms that state and federal constitutions provide. That’s true for corrections officers, teachers, police, IRS agents, and more, and it’s something that Democrats and Republicans should be concerned about.