Difference between revisions of "Guns, Prisons, Crime, and Immigration"

For a full list of individual bills from this section, click here

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.

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:

• Expanding the list of offenses for which a person must pay a for-profit bail-bondsman for their release. (See also this bill and this bill).
  • Eliminating pre-trial release agencies that pursue evidence-based, public-safety oriented methods of release that don't require paying a for-profit business, or imposing new burdens on those agencies.
  • Offering bail bond companies opportunities to avoid paying debts to states by:
    • Allowing debts to expire or
    • Imposing notification technicalities on courts.

Bills that benefit long-time ALEC members of the global for-profit prison industry, like the Corrections Corporation of America, by:

• Increasing time served for drug offenses through mandatory minimum sentencing,
• Creating barriers to alternatives to prison such as community-based corrections programs, which will increase prison populations (see another example (here), and
• Treating juveniles like adults. See also here.

• Not in the zip file, but on The Heartland Institute website, is the "Private Correctional Facilities Act" from 1995, which opens a state to for-profit incarceration.

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:

• Making it a felony to steal from three retail establishments, regardless of the value of the property stolen,
• Adding a penalty-enhancer for thieves who use the emergency exit, and
• Imposing new regulations on swap meets and flea markets that may compete with retail stores.

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:

• Reverse the "Exclusionary Rule" for unlawfully obtained evidence and,
• Eliminate the rule against hearsay when determining whether probable cause existed.

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:

• Oppose bans on semi-automatic firearms like the one used in the shooting in Arizona that killed nine people and seriously injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
• Oppose waiting periods for criminal and mental health background checks for firearm purchases.
• Support concealed-carry gun laws see also here.
• Oppose efforts by law enforcement to use their purchasing power get gun manufacturers not to market guns or ammo likely to be used against police, like "cop killer bullets" that pierce armor.
• Prohibit local counties or cities from enacting firearm restrictions, or emergency measures that could be abused.
• Encourage guns on campus, and for younger kids.

For a full list of bills from this section, click here.

Truth in Sentencing & Private Prisons

Passed in Wisconsin in 1997, "Truth in Sentencing" requires inmates to serve their full sentence and reduced incentives for earlier parole or supervised release. The Walker 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 also 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 this past decade. However, when Scott Walker became governor, he reversed this progress and requested legislation to restore the (ALEC-based) Truth in Sentencing scheme, 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 Wisconsin

In 2011, Wisconsin ALEC members introduced AB-69, a bill containing strikingly similar provisions to the ALEC "Castle Doctrine Act" approved by the National Rifle Association. The bill allows homeowners to shoot and kill a person they claim is breaking into their home, without fear of civil liability if it turns out the person shot was innocent, like a girlfriend sneaking in. A marked-up version of AB-69, noting the related 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 Community Discussion page.

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