In this excellent Freeman piece, Wendy McElroy discusses the ugly phenomenon of federal suits (by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) against companies that use criminal background checks to screen out convicts. Can’t companies have a preference for applicants who haven’t shown that they have trouble abiding by rules and respecting the rights of others? No – not in contemporary America. Wendy goes further than just noting the absurdity of that and shows that bad government policies are to blame for the fact that far more “minority” Americans are sent to jail than whites. Thus, we have a bad government solution to a problem government created in the first place.