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Guns, Prisons, Crime, and Immigration

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! style="padding:2px;" | <h2 style="margin:3px; background:#2966B8; font-size:140%; font-weight:bold; text-align:left; color:#FFFFFF; padding:0.2em 0.4em;">Efforts to Rewrite Americans' Rights; Changes that Imprison More People for Longer and Make More Money</h2>
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| style="color:#000000; font-size:120%; padding:0 0.75em;" | [[File:forprofitprisons.jpg|100px|left|alt=Guns, Prisons, Crime, and Immigration]]'''This page documents how bills pushed by ALEC corporations result in taxpayers subsidizing the profits of the private prison industry by putting more people in for-profit prisons and keeping them in jail 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.<br> '''Through ALEC, corporations have both a VOICE and a VOTE on specific state laws through these model bills. ''Do you?'' '''
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! style="padding:2px;" | <h2 style="margin:3px; background:#000000; font-size:140%; font-weight:bold; border:1px solid #000000; text-align:left; color:#ffffff; padding:0.2em 0.4em;">How Are Corporations Interfering With Our Criminal Justice System?</h2>
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<big>'''Corporations and their politician allies voted behind closed doors through ALEC to change America's criminal justice system and enrich profits.'''</big><br>
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.
! style="padding:2px;" | <h2 style="margin:3px; background:#000000; font-size:140%; font-weight:bold; border:1px solid #000000; text-align:left; color:#ffffff; padding:0.2em 0.4em;">ALEC Ratified "Stand Your Ground" Law</h2>
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| style="color:#000000; padding:0 0.75em;" | [[Image:Trayvon.martin.jpg|left|200px]]In February 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by 28-year-old George Zimmerman as the unarmed high school student returned from a 7-11 with an iced tea and bag of Skittles. Police initially failed to arrest Zimmerman because of the state's "Stand Your Ground" law, which goes beyond the traditional right to self defense by establishing a legal presumption of immunity if a killer claims they had a reasonable fear of bodily harm. The law has been described as an invitation to vigilantism and a "license to kill."
In March 2012, CMD [http://prwatch.org/news/2012/03/11366/alec-ratified-nra-conceived-law-may-protect-trayvon-martins-killer reported] that NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer [http://mediamatters.org/blog/201203270005 helped draft] the Florida law in 2005, and [http://www.prwatch.org/files/Retreat_from_NRA's_force_St._Petersburg_Time.DOC "stared down legislators as they voted"] to pass it. Just a few months later, Hammer [http://www.prwatch.org/files/NRA_2005.png presented the bill] to ALEC's Criminal Justice Task Force (now known as the Public Safety and Elections Task Force), and the NRA [http://www.prwatch.org/files/NRA_2005.png boasted] that "[h]er talk was well-received." The corporations and state legislators on the Task Force -- which was [http://web.archive.org/web/20050810000953/http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/0805/08alec.html chaired] by Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer of long guns -- voted unanimously to approve the bill as an ALEC "model bill." Since becoming an ALEC model it has become law in dozens of other states, and the number of homicides classified as "justifiable" [http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/stand-your-ground-laws-coincide-with-jump-in-justifiable-homicide-cases/2012/04/07/gIQAS2v51S_story.html has dramatically increased].

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