ALEC's Efforts to Rewrite Laws about Americans' Rights
This page documents how bills pushed by ALEC corporations help taxpayers subsidize the profits of the private prison industry by putting more people in jail and keeping them in prison for longer. The bills also would put more guns on streets and interfere with local law enforcement decisions about how best to interact with immigrant communities. Through ALEC, corporations have both a VOICE and a VOTE on specific state laws. Do you?
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Learn MORE about the "Model Bills" ALEC Corporations Are Backing to Rewrite YOUR Rights
The Center for Media and Democracy analyzed the bills ALEC politicians and corporations voted for. More analysis is available below and also at ALEC Exposed's sister sites, PRWatch and SourceWatch.
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:
Anti-immigrant legislation that requires local law enforcement to enforce complex federal law, encourages racial profiling, and destroys the law enforcement-community relationship (see this bill, this bill, this bill, and this bill).
Overturning common-law rules designed to deter police misconduct and ensure arrests and searches are constitutional, including:
Supports concealed-carry gun laws, for example through recognition of concealed carry laws from other states, with reciprocity, and without reciprocity.
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.
Opposes bans on semi-automatic firearms like the one used in the shooting in Arizona that killed nine people and seriously injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
Propping up the commercial bail bond industry that has a record of corrupting the sentencing process, and putting 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
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" and bills to privatize the state's prison system.
Passed in Wisconsin in 1997, "Truth in Sentencing" requires inmates to 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. In many states, Truth in Sentencing has increased profits for private prison companies like the Corrections Corporation of America, a member of ALEC's Private Sector board. In 1999, then-Rep. Scott Walker introduced two bills that would allow private prisons in Wisconsin. While those bills did not pass, some inmates were contracted out to private prisons in other states, and the Corrections Corporation of America has registered lobbyists in the state ever since.
A former head of Wisconsin's prison system who is currently a 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, 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 to restore the ALEC corporation-supported Truth in Sentencing, despite the costs to taxpayers and despite claiming Wisconsin was "broke." It is unknown whether privatized prisons will soon follow.
To learn more about this story, click here, or here.
The NRA's "Castle Doctrine Act"
In 2011, Wisconsin ALEC members introduced AB-69, a bill nearly identical to the ALEC "Castle Doctrine Act" approved by the National Rifle Association. The bill allows a homeowner to shoot and kill a person they claim is breaking into their home, without fear of civil liability. A marked-up version of AB-69, noting the relevant sections of the ALEC Castle Doctrine Act, can be found 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.
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