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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) actively promotes its "Private Correctional Facilities Act" model legislation, which allows any unit of government to contract with for-profit corporations to operate prisons. The model bill is developed and voted on by ALEC's Criminal Justice Task Force, which is co-chaired by CCA executives Brad Wiggins (Director of Business Development) and John Rees (Vice President), representing the ultimate conflict of interest: prison company executives writing laws to privatize the very prisons they will operate.
ALEC also promotes the "Housing Out-of-State Prisoners in a Private Prison Act," allowing private prisons operating in one state to contract with other states to hold prisoners without local government consent. By 2000, CCA, along with Wackenhut Corrections and Sodexho Marriott Services, are prominent among ALEC's corporate funders, with CCA making the President's List for contributions to ALEC's 1999 States & Nation Policy Summit.
The push for privatization delivers massive profits: by the end of 1999, 71,206 prisoners are held in privately operated facilities, accounting for 5.5% of state prisoners. CCA's revenues continue growing exponentially, and the company identifies expansion into new markets (including immigrant detention) as critical for future growth. The legislation creates a direct quid pro quo: executives write laws mandating privatization, then their companies win the contracts to operate the privatized facilities.
This represents a systematic corruption of the legislative process, where ALEC provides a forum for corporations to literally write the laws governing their own industry, remove government oversight, and guarantee their own profits through mandatory privatization provisions.