It’s the best time since 2016 to invest in private prison corporations — at least according to an analyst with Forbes Real Estate Investor.
That’s because stocks in CoreCivic and GEO Group, the country’s two largest private prison corporations, have fallen about 35 percent since June.
This presents an “opportunity,” says the analyst. “Because in almost any outcome other than an [Elizabeth] Warren or [Bernie] Sanders win, these stocks should bounce back to at least where they were in June, offering 50 percent upside.”
See, both Warren and Sanders have proposed banning private prisons and immigration detention facilities as part of their presidential campaigns, which has spooked the market.
If Trump gets re-elected, says the analyst, investors “could see even better movement then that.”
Racism and right-wing nationalism, which have made the U.S. the prison and immigration detention capital of the world, are just too good for business to let morality get in the way. It’s just business, the saying goes.
But was it just business when 27-year-old Jeancarlo Jiménez-Joseph committed suicide after allegedly being denied anti-psychotic medication at Georgia’s Stewart Detention Center, owned and operated by CoreCivic?
Or when 44-year-old Pedro Arriago-Santoya died of a heart infection there in July?
Or when detainees at Stewart are given food tainted with hair, plastic, bugs, rocks, and mice?
Or when 64-year-old Kamyar Samimi, who became a legal permanent U.S. resident in 1979, died at the Denver Contract Detention Facility after GEO Group staff failed to give him medical attention?
Or when GEO Group allegedly used punitive segregation like solitary confinement following suicide attempts?
Fortunately, some investors have done the right thing — only after being pressured by activists, of course.
The largest public pension fund in the U.S., the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), just announced this week it’s divesting from CoreCivic and GEO Group.
As of August, eight large banks, including Bank of America and Wells Fargo, had committed to ending their future financing relationships with the private prison industry. Together this represents an estimated $2.35 billion— or 87.4 percent — of the credit lines and term loans that are central to these corporations’ operations.
Even “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer, that guy on CNBC who yells at viewers about where to put their money, recently said, “No, private prisons — we are against those. They are sell, sell, sell. We’ve been against them for, like, forever.”
That’s the problem with allowing corporations to operate prisons for profit. Even if almost everyone shudders at the horrific conditions inside private prisons, there will always be at least one investor who is willing to say, it’s just business.
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