ALEC secret history of private prisons for profit

Published on The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)
The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor

Mike Elk and Bob Sloan | August 1, 2011
This article is part of a Nation series exposing the American Legislative Exchange Council, in collaboration with the Center For Media and Democracy. John Nichols introduces [1] the series.

The breaded chicken patty your child bites into at school may have been made by a worker earning twenty cents an hour, not in a faraway country, but by a member of an invisible American workforce: prisoners. At the Union Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Florida, inmates from a nearby lower-security prison manufacture tons of processed beef, chicken and pork for Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises [2] (PRIDE), a privately held non-profit corporation that operates the state’s forty-one work programs. In addition to processed food, PRIDE’s website reveals an array of products for sale through contracts with private companies, from eyeglasses to office furniture, to be shipped from a distribution center in Florida to businesses across the US. PRIDE boasts that its work programs are “designed to provide vocational training, to improve prison security, to reduce the cost of state government, and to promote the rehabilitation of the state inmates.”

Although a wide variety of goods have long been produced by state and federal prisoners for the US government—license plates are the classic example, with more recent contracts including everything from guided missile parts to the solar panels powering government buildings—prison labor for the private sector was legally barred for years, to avoid unfair competition with private companies. But this has changed thanks to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), its Prison Industries Act, and a little-known federal program known as PIE (the Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program [3]). While much has been written about prison labor in the past several years, these forces, which have driven its expansion, remain largely unknown.

Somewhat more familiar is ALEC’s instrumental role in the explosion of the US prison population in the past few decades. ALEC helped pioneer some of the toughest sentencing laws on the books today, like mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders, “three strikes” laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws. In 1995 alone, ALEC’s Truth in Sentencing Act [4] was signed into law in twenty-five states. (Then State Rep. Scott Walker was an ALEC member when he sponsored Wisconsin's truth-in-sentencing laws and, according to PR Watch, used its statistics to make the case for the law.) More recently, ALEC has proposed innovative “solutions” to the overcrowding it helped create, such as privatizing the parole process through “the proven success of the private bail bond industry,” as it recommended in 2007. (The American Bail Coalition is an executive member of ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force.) ALEC has also worked to pass state laws to create private for-profit prisons, a boon to two of its major corporate sponsors: Corrections Corporation of America and Geo Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections), the largest private prison firms in the country. An In These Times investigation [5] last summer revealed that ALEC arranged secret meetings between Arizona’s state legislators and CCA to draft what became SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious immigration law, to keep CCA prisons flush with immigrant detainees. ALEC has proven expertly capable of devising endless ways to help private corporations benefit from the country’s massive prison population. 

That mass incarceration would create a huge captive workforce was anticipated long before the US prison population reached its peak—and at a time when the concept of “rehabilitation” was still considered part of the mission of prisons. First created by Congress in 1979, the PIE program was designed “to encourage states and units of local government to establish employment opportunities for prisoners that approximate private sector work opportunities,” according to PRIDE’s website. The benefits to big corporations were clear—a “readily available workforce” for the private sector and “a cost-effective way to occupy a portion of the ever-growing offender/inmate population” for prison officials—yet from its founding until the mid-1990s, few states participated in the program.

This started to change in 1993, when Texas State Representative and ALEC member Ray Allen crafted the Texas Prison Industries Act, which aimed to expand the PIE program. After it passed in Texas, Allen advocated that it be duplicated across the country. In 1995, ALEC’s Prison Industries Act was born.

This Prison Industries Act as printed in ALEC’s 1995 state legislation sourcebook, “provides for the employment of inmate labor in state correctional institutions and in the private manufacturing of certain products under specific conditions.” These conditions, defined by the PIE program, are supposed to include requirements that “inmates must be paid at the prevailing wage rate” and that the “any room and board deductions…are reasonable and are used to defray the costs of inmate incarceration.” (Some states charge prisoners for room and board, ostensibly to offset the cost of prisons for taxpayers. In Florida, for example, prisoners are paid minimum wage for PIE-certified labor, but 40 percent is taken out of their accounts for this purpose.) 

The Prison Industries Act sought to change this, inventing the “private sector prison industry expansion account,” to absorb such deductions, and stipulating that the money should be used to, among other things: “construct work facilities, recruit corporations to participate as private sector industries programs, and pay costs of the authority and department in implementing [these programs].” Thus, money that was taken from inmate wages to offset the costs of incarceration would increasingly go to expanding prison industries. In 2000, Florida passed a law that mirrored the Prison Industries Act and created the Prison Industries Trust Fund, its own version of the private sector prison industry expansion account, deliberately designed to help expand prison labor for private industries.

The Prison Industries Act was also written to exploit a critical PIE loophole that seemed to suggest that its rules did not apply to prisoner-made goods that were not shipped across state lines. It allowed a third-party company to set up a local address in a state that makes prison goods, buy goods from a prison factory, sell those products locally or surreptitiously ship them across state borders. It helped that by 1995 oversight of the PIE program had been effectively squashed, transferred from the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance [6] to the National Correctional Industries Association [7] (NCIA), a private trade organization that happened to be represented by Allen’s lobbying firm, Service House, Inc. In 2003, Allen became the Texas House Chairman of the Corrections Committee and began peddling the Prison Industries Act and other legislation beneficial to CCA and Geo Group, like the Private Correctional Facilities Act [8]. Soon thereafter he became Chairman of ALEC’s Criminal Justice (now Public Safety and Elections) Task Force. He resigned from the state legislature in 2006 while under investigation for his unethical lobbying practices. He was hired soon after as a lobbyist for Geo Group. 

Today’s chair of ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections Task force is state Representative Jerry Madden of Texas, where the Prison Industries Act originated eighteen years ago. According to a 2010 report from NCIA, as of last summer there were "thirty jurisdictions with active [PIE] operations." These included such states as Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and twelve more. Four more states are now looking to get involved as well; Kentucky, Michigan and Pennsylvania have introduced legislation and New Hampshire is in the process of applying for PIE certification. Today these state’s legislation are based upon an updated version of the Prison Industries Act [9], which ALEC amended in 2004. 

Prison labor has already started to undercut the business of corporations that don’t use it. In Florida, PRIDE has become one of the largest printing corporations in the state, its cheap labor having a significant impact upon smaller local printers. This scenario is playing out in states across the country. In addition to Florida's forty-one prison industries, California alone has sixty. Another 100 or so are scattered throughout other states. What's more, several states are looking to replace public sector workers with prison labor. In Wisconsin Governor Walker’s recent assault on collective bargaining opened the door to the use of prisoners in public sector jobs in Racine, where inmates are now doing landscaping, painting, and other maintenance work. According to the Capitol Times, “inmates are not paid for their work, but receive time off their sentences.” The same is occurring in Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida and Georgia, all states with GOP Assembly majorities and Republican governors. Much of ALEC’s proposed labor legislation, implemented state by state is allowing replacement of public workers with prisoners. 

“It’s bad enough that our companies have to compete with exploited and forced labor in China,” says Scott Paul Executive Director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a coalition of business and unions. “They shouldn’t have to compete against prison labor here at home. The goal should be for other nations to aspire to the quality of life that Americans enjoy, not to discard our efforts through a downward competitive spiral.”

Alex Friedmann, associate editor of Prison Legal News, says prison labor is part of a “confluence of similar interests” among politicians and corporations, long referred to as the “prison industrial complex.” As decades of model legislation reveals, ALEC has been at the center of this confluence. “This has been ongoing for decades, with prison privatization contributing to the escalation of incarceration rates in the US,” Friedmann says. Just as mass incarceration has burdened American taxpayers in major prison states, so is the use of inmate labor contributing to lost jobs, unemployment and decreased wages among workers—while corporate profits soar.

Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/article/162478/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor
Links:
[1] http://www.thenation.com/article/161978/alec-exposed
[2] http://www.pride-enterprises.org/
[3] http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA/grant/piecp.html
[4] http://alecexposed.org/w/images/1/19/7D11-Truth_in_Sentencing_Act_Exposed.pdf
[5] http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6084/corporate_con_game/
[6] http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA/
[7] http://www.nationalcia.org/
[8] http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/6263.pdf
[9] http://alecexposed.org/w/images/4/4d/7N4-Prison_Industries_Act_Exposed.pdf

SB 1070: It’s All About the Benjamins
Posted Friday, October 29, 2010 by Catherine Traywick

The controversial Arizona law that triggered a nationwide wave of anti-immigrant legislation was always a multipurpose measure. While SB 1070 is both an oppressive enforcement mechanism and a shockingly effective political tool, it is also a ridiculously successful moneymaker—generating a virtually endless stream of immigrants to fill Arizona’s thriving private prison industry.
That, in itself, isn’t terribly surprising. More noteworthy, as a new NPR investigation reveals, is the pivotal—and underhanded—role that prison industry titans played in crafting the pernicious legislation.
The investigation found that a “conservative, free-market orientated, limited-government group” called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) collectively drafted the model legislation that became SB 1070. Much of the Arizona state legislature claims membership to the nonprofit group, including Arizona state senator Russell Pearce (R), one of SB1070’s sponsors and most vocal defendant.
Other notable ALEC members include multi-billion dollar corporations eager to rub elbows with and influence conservative lawmakers: The National Rifle Association, ExxonMobil, and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)—the largest private prison company in the nation.
While Pearce claims to be the brains behind SB 1070, the NPR piece argues that Pearce and CCA worked closely on drafting the model legislation that would become SB 1070:
According to Corrections Corporation of America reports reviewed by NPR, executives believe immigrantdetention is their next big market. Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in "a significant portion of our revenues" from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants.
In the conference room, the group decided they would turn the immigration idea into a model bill. They discussed and debated language. Then, they voted on it.
"There were no 'no' votes," Pearce said. "I never had one person speak up in objection to this model legislation."
Four months later, that model legislation became, almost word for word, Arizona's immigration law.
But Pearce vehemently denies NPR’s narrative, which was fleshed out from interviews with anonymous sources, lobbying documents, corporate records and campaign finance reports. The controversial lawmaker instead claims that CCA’s alleged involvement in crafting the bill was exaggerated by NPR researchers and that the overall timeline “is a lie.”
Despite Pearce’s bloviating, NPR’s version of the SB 1070 story is well-backed by other media outlets who have done the research. Think Progress, whose reporters have been following this story well before the NPR investigation broke, similarly connected Pearce to CCA and ALEC—even including a link to ALEC’s January/February 2010 newsletter, which summarizes the model legislation on page 15.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R), one of SB 1070’s most vocal—if least coherent—proponents has also been closely linked to CCA; her campaign chair and policy advisor, Chuck Coughlin, is a lobbyist for the company—as was her communications director, Paul Senseman (whose wife, incidentally, still lobbies for CCA). That’s a hell of a coincidence.
Pearce’s denouncement of the NPR story might have more teeth to it if he didn’t have such a glaring track record of public deceit. After repeating the same bogus statistics about rising Latino crime rates, for example, CNN finally fact-checked him following an interview with Tony Harris last spring, and confirmed that most of his talking points were made up or grossly exaggerated. Politifact moreover gave him a “pants on fire” rating for comments he made about SB 1070’s popularity among Hispanics.
Besides, CCA doubtlessly stands to gain everything from increased immigration detention. The business of detaining immigrants is so profitable, in fact, that its expansion actually saved CCA from imminent bankruptcy in 2004, according to a report byStephanie Mencimer atMother Jones.
Just how lucrative is immigration detention? Each detainee costs the federal government approximately $122 per day—about $1.7 billion per year, while detention alternatives cost a mere $12 per day.
Given the record numbers of immigrants being mandatorily detained every year (nearly 400,000 in fiscal year 2010 [PDF]), immigration detention is a booming business. Because the federal government doesn’t have the capacity to house the masses of people it regularly detains, the majority of detention beds are outsourced to municipal prisons and private facilities, like those operated by CCA.
To keep up with the exponential growth of the immigrant detainee population, Congress has been allocating additional funds for detention beds at staggering rate: $104 million in FY 2006, $241 million in FY 2007, and $250.4 million in FY 2008.
Optimistic about increasing profits even further, CCA has taken its model legislation across the country. Think Progress has pointed out CCA’s inceptive ties to anti-immigrant bills proposed in Tennessee, Oklahoma, Colorado, Florida, and Pennsylvania—even including a link to ALEC’s January/February 2010 newsletter, which summarizes the model legislation on page 15.
A while back Rachel Maddow exposed the racist roots of SB 1070, revealing its authors’ connections to white supremacist hate groups—a critical fact that should not be underestimated. But the roots of SB 1070, and other bills modeled on it, clearly run much deeper than its creators’ nativist zeal. Like most pernicious forces in society, SB 1070 is propelled by a long and surreptitious money trail.
Catherine Traywick is a former staff writer for Campus Progress and a blogger for The Media Consortium. You can e-mail her at: catherine.traywick@gmail.com.

Related Stories

VIDEO: DREAM Act-Eligible Youth Can’t Wait
Study: Legalization Benefits Educational Achievement of Immigrants
Who You Gonna Call? Your Super Committee Member (on Oct. 31)
Statement on the End of the Iraq War: It’s Finally Over
DREAM Activist Describes Fear After Alabama’s HB 56: ‘I’m Not The Only One’


Comments for this page are closed.

blog comments powered by DISQUS

Immigration Reform
Commentary
Immigrants in the City
Detroit
Phoenix
Los Angeles
Mexico City
Boston
Washington
DC
New Orleans
New York
NY Politics
LGBT Issues
Education
Immigrant Communities
Hispanic
Polish
Brazilian
Haitian
Indian
African
Chinese
Asian
Arab
Bosnian
Korean
Filipino
Mexican
Russian
Vietnamese
Immigrants in Europe
Pakistani
Turkish
Irish
Giffords Shooting Leaves Gap in Immigration Debate
By John Rudolph • 1/10/11 • Categorized as Immigration News,Immigration Reform



US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. (Photo: Freedom to Marry/Flickr)
Gabrielle Giffords is considered a moderate on a range of issues including immigration, and she was expected to play an important role in congressional debate on the issue this year.

Her anticipated lengthy absence from Congress, while she recovers from a gunshot wound to the head from Saturday’s assassination attempt, raises a number of tough questions.  Among them – the future of U.S. immigration policy.

Her southern Arizona district includes a significant section of the U.S.-Mexico border. She supported the DREAM Act, which would have provided a path to legal status for many undocumented young people.  She has also been a strong advocate for increased border security, and she opposed Arizona’s SB 1070, considered one of the most restrictive immigration laws in the nation.

On her website she states:

“Since I first went to Congress, protecting our borders has remained a high priority.  I have repeatedly fought for more Border Patrol agents and technology to secure our border. In addition, I have worked to increase funding for the State Criminal Alien Program (SCAAP), a federal program that reimburses local law enforcement agencies for the apprehension and detention of illegal immigrants.”

For Isabel Garcia, director of Derechos Humanos a human rights coalition based in Tucson, Arizona, the attempt on Giffords’ life underscores what Garcia believes are misguided government priorities.

“What we know here is that we have some very dangerous people, they are the terrorists,” Garcia told Fi2W.  “Rather than giving Gaby (Giffords) security because of the threats, instead what we see is that immigrants are branded as terrorist and look at the consequences of that.”

The FBI and the Pima County Sheriff have confirmed that Giffords received threats against her life, but not from Jared Loughner, the man accused in Saturday’s shooting spree.  Six people, including a federal judge, an aide to Giffords and a 9-year-old girl, were killed in the shooting. Giffords and 13 others were wounded.

As the first Jewish woman elected to Congress from her state, Giffords has attracted considerable attention from Jewish groups.   The website JTA reports on a 2009 meeting between Giffords and faith groups from Arizona concerned about immigrant rights.

Her approach to the issue was typical for the moderate Democrat, (Josh Protas, former director of the Tucson-area Jewish Community Relations Council) said: She attempted to synthesize what she regarded as the valid viewpoints of both sides on the divisive issue.

“Understanding the complexities of the immigration situation was something important to her,” he said. It came from “a sense of the Jewish value around how we treat the stranger, a history of the Jewish community — but she had recognition of the strong need for security.”

Clearly, in addition to the lives lost and shattered in Saturday’s shooting rampage outside a Tuscon supermarket, a moderate voice in Congress has been sidelined at a time when moderate voices are desperately needed.

Valeria Fernandez contributed reporting for this story.