Prisons For Women and Children (or how prison corporations got Arizona to follow their business model)
National Public Radio takes a disturbing look at the genesis of Arizona SB1070 from a prison companies desire to warehouse illegals, to drafting legislation in a hotel in DC with corporate interests at the table, to the influencing of Arizona legislators who help push SB1070 to law. SB1070 named and drafted at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a yearly meeting of state legislators and corporate interests, was passed unchanged into Arizona law.
Last year, two men showed up in Benson, Ariz., a small desert town 60 miles from the Mexico border, offering a deal.
Glenn Nichols, the Benson city manager, remembers the pitch.
“The gentleman that’s the main thrust of this thing has a huge turquoise ring on his finger,” Nichols said. “He’s a great big huge guy and I equated him to a car salesman.”
What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants.
“They talk [about] how positive this was going to be for the community,” Nichols said, “the amount of money that we would realize from each prisoner on a daily rate.”
But Nichols wasn’t buying. He asked them how would they possibly keep a prison full for years — decades even — with illegal immigrants?
“They talked like they didn’t have any doubt they could fill it,” Nichols said.
That’s because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona’s immigration law.
The whole program will be available at 9am EST.
