Corporations and their politician allies voted behind closed doors through ALEC to change America's criminal justice system and enrich profits.
On the surface, many ALEC bills look like basic tough-on-crime legislation, but some corporate leaders of ALEC benefit financially from such legislation -- meaning that what has been sold to the public as good for public safety was often pushed by corporations that profit from such changes in the law, without politicians disclosing their corporate allies' financial interest to the public when such bills, pre-approved by the corporations, were introduced.
Examples include:
Bills that prop up the for-profit bail bond industry, a long-time ALEC board member, through:
Bills that benefit long-time ALEC members of the global for-profit prison industry, like the Corrections Corporation of America, by:
Bills that add new penalties for retail theft, which increase prison population and aid ALEC corporations that are retailers, like corporate board member Wal-Mart, such as:
Other drug use-related bills would require that any college student convicted of a drug crime lose financial aid, promote drug testing in American workplaces, even if the work has nothing to do with public safety, and suspend the driver’s license of anyone convicted of a drug crime.
The bills also include anti-immigrant legislation that require local law enforcement to enforce complex federal law, result in racial or ethnic profiling, and destroy the law enforcement-community relationship. (See Arizona's SB1070 model here, as well as this bill, this bill and this bill).
The bills would also overturn long-standing rules designed to protect Americans' constitutional rights, including the right to be free from warrantless searches and the right to confront one's accusers, such as legislation to:
Still other bills would aid corporations in other ways, like bills to punish homeowners for the mortgage crisis by creating the crime of "mortgage fraud," that focuses primarily on consumers, but no corresponding new crimes for the Wall Street shell game that sank the U.S. economy.
Spotlight on Gun Bills
For many years, until this spring, the National Rifle Association (NRA) actually co-chaired the ALEC "Task Force on Public Safety and Elections." (The election bills are discussed in the section of this site titled "Democracy, Voter Rights and Federal Power.") ALEC bills include "model" legislation that advances the constitutionality of an individual's right to bear arms, an argument vindicated by a recent ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court. The legislation also would likely benefit the firearms industry closely connected to the NRA.
Bills or resolutions in this area:
For a full list of bills from this section, click here.
This information is available for download as a two-page fact sheet here.
