Major Investor Fully Divests From Prisons

Systematic Financial Management dumps private prison stock and ends its membership in the Million Shares Club.

Systematic Financial Management, an investment company that manages over $13 billion in investments for local governments, retirement funds, corporations, wealthy individuals and unions has fully divested from the for-profit prison industry, dumping over one million shares of stock in GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America.

Systematic joins the ranks of other U.S. institutions that have divested from the private prison industry including Allianz Asset Management, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, General Electric, and Pershing Square Capital Management among others.

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group (GEO), which own the majority of the private prison market in the U.S., depend on the massive incarceration of immigrants and people of color to maintain financial viability. Both companies are heavily involved in lobbying Congress and federal agencies for policies and contracts that result in the inhumane incarceration of hundreds of thousands of harmless immigrants and people of color.

Systematic Financial Management divested 2,754,722 shares of CCA stock and 74,550 shares of GEO stock during the third quarter of this year.

We urge the other major investors in private prisons to divest their holdings as well.