- Defendings with deadly outcome are legally allowed

What is ALEC?

ALEC stands for ‘American Legislative Exchange Council‘

-It is  an organisation made up of corporations and politicians (mostly Republicans)

-Alec members can propose political laws to their Republican colleagues 

-They vote with the representatives of the Republicans about law proposals

-Alec pushed forward policies to  increase the prison population and the length of  their sentence

Connection between ALEC and the CCA

- CCA is a private organisation which supervises and runs a large number of private prisons in the US

- They need ALEC in order to get more people imprisoned, so they can make more profit(for shareholders)

- CCA made contracts with multiple states(state had to ensure to keep these prisons filled)

- Due to their contracts, this system was guaranteed to have success

What are the effects of the privatization of the prison system?
  
- With private organizations like the CCA, desires to make profit grows. The more people go into prison, the more profit goes to the shareholders of the organization. This, of course, pushes ALEC as well as the CCA to push laws, which increase the criminalization rate.  
These laws harm the American people and particularly leads to mass incarceration of coloured people. 

 

Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Meaning:
In theory, it is not allowed to have/to own slaves, but if somebody committs a crime you can punish him with forced labour.

Economy and 13th amendment:
With the end of slavery, the economy collapsed so the Southerners needed these slave workers/forced labourers. As a consequence of the loophole in the 13th amendment, lots of black people were arrested to rebuild the economy.

The loophole:
It is named loophole, because it allows "slavery" as a punishment for crime, so blacks were arrested arbitrarily. So slavery was still possible and white people used this loophole to rebuild the economy.