by David Safier
NPR is a little late to the party on this one, but it looks like they've done some serious new research on the connections between private prisons and the creation of SB1070.
Here's the money quote.
[W]hile the debate [over SB1070] raged, few people were aware of how the law came about.
NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.
The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.
Money to be made on locking up immigrants? Who would have guessed? (Answer: Morgan Loew at KVOA who probably did the best, most groundbreaking work; Blog for Arizona; Rachel Maddow [who was tipped to the story by BfA when her exec producer was in Tucson]; and others.)
NPR describes the genesis of the bill at a meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
It's a membership organization of state legislators and powerful corporations and associations, such as the tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., ExxonMobil and the National Rifle Association. Another member is the billion-dollar Corrections Corporation of America — the largest private prison company in the country.
And the private prison corporations understand the cash cow they've created.
According to Corrections Corporation of America reports reviewed by NPR, executives believe immigrant detention 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.
This is new, and very important information. There's nothing illegal here, but it demonstrates the Russell Pearce/corporation/Brewer-and-her-lobbyist-advisors confluence. Here's a chart from the story.
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Rep. Raúl Grijalva is going to be on Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight at 5:30 Arizona time on MSNBC to discuss new revelations about the private prison industry’s role in writing and passing SB 1070, the unfair and draconian Arizona measure that’s made national headlines since it became law. According to a months-long investigation by National Public Radio, the law was pushed from behind the scenes for many months by the Corrections Corporation of America — which now views women and children as “the next big market” for its for-profit prison business model.
Grijalva will be on the show to put this news in context and talk about where we go from here in rolling back this and other unjust laws around the country.