The Attorney General of New Jersey this week announced a seven-count indictment against Haynes Security Inc., and its founder. Haynes is a major 'security' contractor for the airports, bridges and tunnels run by the Port Authority of New York-New Jersey, a joint agency of those two state governments.

It turns out that, according to the state of New Jersey, Haynes had been hiring convicted felons for positions 'guarding those jobs, failing to do the requisite background checks, and bribing people to keep quiet about that fact.

According to the Newark Star-Ledger, Haynes workers screened passenger luggage at the airport until last year when Transportation Security Administration workers took over those jobs. "At least five" worked security at Newark Liberty International Airport for as long as a year.

Another report in the Star-Ledger said that "Some worked as 'pre-board screeners' at airport security checkpoints" -- those are the folks who search your carry-on baggage and the clothes off your back, not the checked passenger luggage. The "pre-board screeners" were among those felons found to have "convictions on drug and weapons offenses, robbery and theft," according to another Star-Ledger report.

The indictments grew out of an investigation that began in December 2001 after two former employees filed a lawsuit saying they were fired for complaining that Haynes routinely hired convicts as security guards. Yet the Port Authority has for the two-plus years since continued to use Haynes employees to search persons, luggage and vehicles at three major airports and three major points of entry into Manhattan.

And last year Haynes signed a contract to provide 'security' for JFK and LaGuardia airports; and still has people working those jobs.

What kind of oversight is this? How is it that the Port Authority hired a firm where:

The director of human resources was a disgraced former Newark police officer who once had to be brought to work from a halfway house. The director of marketing had worn an electronic monitoring bracelet on his ankle. The director of technical services served time for burglary. (Star-Ledger)

This is the kind of insanity that consumers can expect when decisions regarding their security are forfeited to government agencies rather than left in the realm of a market where the consumer's choice is sovereign. When the people doing the choosing don't have their own privacy on the line, villainous criminality is not a chief concern but merely another neglected pile of paperwork.

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