Guns, Prisons, Crime, and Immigration

ALEC's Efforts to Rewrite Laws about Americans' Rights The bills on this page represent ALEC corporations' efforts to support the private prison industry by putting more people in jail, to interfere with rehabilitative incareration alternatives, to perpetuate the failed "war on drugs," to prop up the commercial bail-bond industry, to put more guns on streets, and to criminalize immigrants. These "model bills" are drafted at American Legislative Exchange Council conventions with input from, and approval by, Big Business, then introduced in state legislatures to erode the democratic power of average Americans. Politicians are elected to represent the people, not corporations; through ALEC, corporations have both a VOICE and a VOTE on specific state laws. Do you?

READ the "Model Bills" HERE Clicking here will send a zip file of all bills on this topic. To read the list of individual bills before opening them, click here. WHO Is Behind ALEC? Corporations and politicians on ALEC's Task Forces(details here) Businesses and legislators on ALEC's leadership boards (details here) Managers, staff, and "experts" of ALEC (details here) Related ALEC Exposed Articles ALEC funding and spending (here) ALEC connections to David and Charles Koch, the oil billionaires (here) Proposals to change the rules for workers, including unions (here) Industry-specific agendas, like oil companies (here) and the health insurance industry (here)

How YOU Can Expose ALEC & Share What You Learn SPREAD THE WORD. Share the information and articles on this page through FACEBOOK, EMAIL, AND TWITTER. Concerned groups and individuals in every state need to have this information to start their own investigations of how ALEC corporations and politicians have tried to rewrite state law. EXPOSE ALEC LEGISLATORS. It boasts of 2,000 state legislators, but ALEC's membership list is a secret. Demand the truth from state ethics officials or use your state’s open records law to find out if YOUR tax dollars are being used by politicians to pay annual dues to ALEC. See if your elected representatives are accepting “scholarships” or reimbursement from ALEC's corporate-funded coffers for fancy ALEC conventions and events. EXPOSE ALEC'S ROLE IN YOUR STATE HOUSE. Read these corporate-backed "model bills" NOW and start to cross-check them with bills of the same name or similar bills in your state legislature. Ask your local media to report on what you have found or write a letter to the paper to share what you learned. (The full set of bills is available in the left column.) SHARE YOUR DISCOVERIES. Tell us what about what you uncovered! Tweet what you learn with the hashtag #ALECExposed or post a comment in the "community page" of this website or email us a confidential tip via tipline AT sourcewatch.org. With over 7,000 state legislators in the United States and thousands of bills in each state house every year, it will take a team of people in every state to expose the full array of the ALEC corporate agenda. Take action today to help your family, friends, and fellow Americans better understand how global corporations are trying to rewrite your rights.

Learn MORE about the "Model Bills" that Are Attempting to Rewrite YOUR Rights The Center for Media and Democracy has annotated the "model legislation" politicians and corporations voted on, and we will be adding our analysis to this page and other publications, such as our sister sites, PRWatch and SourceWatch. Please bookmark this page and check the boxes below for updates on analysis and information. How Are Corporations Interfering With Our Criminal Justice System? Corporations and their politician allies VOTED behind closed doors through ALEC to change America's criminal justice system by: Enacting new barriers to community-based corrections (7C2, 7C3), which will increase prison populations and the profits of the private prison industry Anti-immigrant legislation that requires local law enforcement to enforce complex federal law, encourages racial profiling, and destroys the law enforcment-community relationship Overturning common-law rules designed to deter police misconduct and ensure arrests and searches are constitutional, including: reversal of the “Exclusionary Rule” for unlawfully obtained evidence (7D1) and elimination of the “hearsay rule” when determining whether probable cause existed (7D2) Adding new penalties to retail theft (which will benefit Private Sector Board Member Wal-Mart), such as: adding a penalty enhancer for thieves who use the emergency exit (7B8), and regardless of the value of the property stolen, making it a felony to steal from three retail establishments (7B7) Imposing new regulations on swap meets and flea markets that may compete with retail stores(7B5) Perpetuating the war on drugs through: mandatory minimum sentencing for drug crimes (7D6) requiring university students convicted of any drug crime be suspended and lose financial aid (7F4), promoting drug testing in workplaces (7F14), and suspending driver’s licenses for all persons convicted of drug crimes (7Q5) Including victims in the parole decision, even though victim anger has little to do with a person’s likelihood of recidivism or rehabilitiation, but will lengthen prison sentences (7D7) (see also Constitutional Amendment 7R1), (sentencing decision 7R3) Imposing unrealistic conditions for parolees or persons on probation, setting them up for failure and re-incarceration Blaming homeowners for the mortgage crisis by creating the crime of “mortgage fraud” (7I1) Opposing the collection of personal information in pawnbroking (7I2) Supporting the National Rifle Association agenda through legislation and resolutions that: Puts guns on college campuses (7J1) Supports "concealed carry" gun laws through, for example, recognition of concealed carry laws from other states, (with reciprocity 7J4), and (without reciprocity 7J3). Prohibits local counties or cities from enacting firearm restrictions (7J5) Opposes efforts by law enforcement to use their purchasing power to pursue public safety ends by asking gun manufacturers not to market weapons for criminal use (7J7) Opposes the ability for law enforcement officers to seize guns and ammunition in declared “states of emergency” (7J8) Opposes waiting periods for firearm purchases (7J10) Opposes bans on semi-automatic firearms (like the one used in the Arizona shooting that killed 9 people and seriously injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords) (7J11) Puts guns in kid's hands (7J9) Promoting legislation to treat juveniles as adults and creating new legislation with new penalties for juvenile offenders (7L0) Subjecting juveniles to the same lineup requirements as adults (7L1) Propping-up the commercial bail-bond industry that has a record of corrupting the sentencing process, and puts the decision of whether an accused person goes free in the hands of a profit-oriented business, through legislation that: attacks efforts to enact evidence-based alternative pre-trial release programs by imposing new reporting requirements on pre-trial release agencies offers bail bond companies opportunities to avoid paying debts to states by: allowing debts to expire (7A4) or imposing notification technicalities on courts (7A5) expanding the list of offenses for which a person must pay a for-profit bail-bondsman for their release (7A11) (7A9) (7A1) Did You Know about these Bills? Some of this Corporate Agenda Has Already Become Law When current Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was a state representative, he was an ALEC member and introduced (several?) bills proposed by ALEC, including "Truth in Sentencing." Passed in Wisconsin in 1997, the bill requires inmates serve their full sentence without options for parole or supervised release. The program has inflated prison populations and greatly increased the amount of taxpayer dollars spent on prisons (in Wisconsin, to an estimated $1.8 billion through 2025). All of which increases profits for private prison companies like the Corrections Corporation of America, a member of the ALEC Private Sector board. A former head of Wisconsin's prison system (and current University of Wisconsin Law Professor) Walter Dickey told American Radio Works it is "shocking" that lawmakers would write sentencing policy with help from ALEC, a group that gets funding from, and supposedly "expertise" from a private prison corporation. "I don't know that they know anything about sentencing," he said. "They know how to build prisons, presumably, since that's the business they're in. They don't know anything about probation and parole. They don't know about the development of alternatives. They don't know about how public safety might be created and defended in communities in this state and other states." The Wisconsin state legislature apparently recognized the folly of Truth in Sentencing and rolled-back the law between 2001 and 2009. When Scott Walker became governor, he reversed this progress and requested legislation restoring the ALEC corporation-supported Truth in Sentencing, despite the costs to taxpayers and despite claiming Wisconsin was "broke." To learn more about this story, click here or here. (Have any of these bills been introduced or enacted in YOUR state? If so, please add that information to the ALEC Exposed page on your state by searching for your state's name in the search engine at the top of this page.) Other Helpful Resources Here are links to reports by reporters and advocates that have been challenging the ALEC corporate agenda: (CMD is not affiliated with these other organizations. If you would like to be listed as a resource, please contact us.) The American Legislative Exchange Council, on the Center for Media and Democracy's SourceWatch.org (wiki) and A CMD Special Report: Who Is the League of American Voters?, by the Center for Media and Democracy's PRWatch.org (March 2011) (PLACEHOLDER) Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America, by the American Association for Justice (May 2010) Corporate America's Trojan Horse in the States: The Untold Story Behind the American Legislative Exchange Council, by the Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council (March 2002) ALEC: The Voice of Corporate Special Interests In State Legislatures, by People for the American Way (May 2011) Wisconsin's Cronon Affair: The Power of a Simple Fact, by The Nation (March 2011) Wolves in Sheep's Clothing, by Common Cause (August 2006) Conservative Corporate Advocacy Group ALEC Behind Voter Disenfranchisement Efforts' by the Center for American Progress and Campus Progress (March 2011) ALEC Exposed is a project of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). CMD does NOT accept donations from for-profit corporations or government agencies. More information about CMD is available here. You can reach the publisher of ALEC Exposed, CMD's Executive Director, Lisa Graves, via editor AT alecexposed.org. Worker and Consumer Rights · Tort Reform and Injured Americans · Privatizing Schools and Higher Ed Policy · Health, Pharmaceuticals and Safety Net Programs · Environment, Energy and Agriculture · Democracy, Voter Rights and Federal Power · Taxes and Budgets · Guns, Prisons, Crime and Immigration