JPMorgan stopped bankrolling private prisons. Individual investors should, too.
On March 8, JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced that the firm will no longer finance private, for-profit prison operators, including those who run detention facilities along the border between the United States and Mexico. Although this is welcome news, the move could be simply symbolic if banks and other groups do not continue to call for divestment. And it’s not just financiers and big investors who have a responsibility to act. Everyday Americans should do their part, too. About 70 percent of immigrant detainees are held in facilities owned by for-profit companies, according to the National Immigrant Justice Center. These corporations face allegations that they force detained immigrants to perform unpaid labor inside their facilities, a kind of modern slavery. GEO Group, of the two publicly traded companies affected by the JPMorgan decision, has been accused by human rights monitors of neglect and abuse at their facilities. The Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California, with its history of death and complaints of assault and medical neglect, has drawn comparisons to a modern-day concentration camp. An ongoing lawsuit asserts that detainees were subjected to practices that violate federal anti-slavery laws, including the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. And although private prison revenues