“No, we’re not Google, but we’re still doing pretty good.” The quote comes from Shayn March, the vice president and treasurer of the GEO Group, one of the largest international companies responsible for supplying private correctional facilities.
GEO Group holds over 100 facilities worldwide, including prisons, and employs over 20,000 people in the UK, Australia, South Africa and the United States. The company is also a leader in the “fully-integrated equity real estate investment trust specializing in the design, development, financing, and operation of correctional, detention, and community reentry facilities worldwide.”
“I think I started at GEO, our stock price … got down to $12.50. And if you factor in an apples-to-apples comparison to where we are today, our stock is well over $50 a share. So we have quadrupled our value in that six-year period,” March stated at a Barclays High Yield Bond & Syndicated Loan conference in June.
The senior executive was voicing the consensus of private correctional facility success rates in the United States, assuring investors that the criminal justice reform will “attract crime” and “[generate] new correctional needs.”
GEO Group disclosed the Risk Factors to investors, outlining the potential changes that could “adversely affect” their firm, including “the relaxation of criminal or immigration enforcement efforts,” and “changes in existing criminal or immigration laws.”
“Any changes with respect to the decriminalization of drugs and controlled substances could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, sentenced and incarcerated, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them,” the report states. “Immigration reform laws which are currently a focus for legislators and politicians at the federal, state and local level also could materially adversely impact us.”
The private prison industry has pushed for tougher sentencing laws in the past. Behind-the-scenes efforts to draft laws have been linked to these efforts over recent years, particularly in immigration issues.
You want to support Anonymous Independent & Investigative News? Please, follow us on Twitter: Follow @AnonymousNewsHQ
This Article (Private Prisons push for Tougher Sentencing or risk Profits) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author AnonWatcher and AnonHQ.com.
