From a story on NPR’s “Morning Edition” today:
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.
Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, pictured here at Tea Party rally on Oct. 22, was instrumental in drafting the state’s immigration law. He also sits on a American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) task force, a group that helped shape the law.
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.
This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 3, 2010.
Isn’t this old news?
In the sense that one of the most important news outlets in the country reported it on their flagship program for eight minutes today, no.
But it’s been talked about in the press for a while. At the very least it’s long been suspected that the corporate prison lobby has had a hand in the bill. I guess this is the first time someone’s claimed that there’s real evidence.