Limit solitary confinement to safety or serious violations, capped at 30 consecutive days
Criminal justice - prison reform
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Solitary confinement rules for the public prisons that hold most incarcerated people are set by legislatures, courts and corrections agencies, out of shareholders' reach. A slice of the system is different: GEO Group and CoreCivic are publicly traded companies that run prisons and detention centers, and their owners can demand humane practices directly. Shareholders passed a human rights implementation reporting resolution at GEO Group in 2019 with 88 percent support, showing the ownership channel works where it reaches. The primary resistance is not corporate: reform stalls in legislatures and public corrections agencies, and corrections officer unions, public employees answering to no shareholders, have sued to overturn New York's solitary limits and helped defeat or soften similar bills in Connecticut and other states.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Common Ground of the American People: Prison Reform, Program for Public Consultation / Voice of the People, survey February 2021
- Investors say GEO Group is ill-prepared to guard against human rights risks, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2019
- GEO Group Under Pressure from Shareholders on Human Rights Policy, Prison Legal News, 2019-09-05
- These Labor Unions Are Fighting to Keep Solitary Confinement, The Nation, 2022-08-16
2 campaigns on record
Report annually on the company's website, beginning in September 2019, on how it implements the Respect for Our Inmates and Detainees part of its human rights policy: how employees are made aware of and apply the commitment to inmate and detainee human rights, the metrics used to assess human rights performance and any independent outside verification of them, and how shortcomings are remedied.
With Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergymen, Dominican Sisters of Hope, Congregation of St. Joseph, US Central and Southern Province, Society of Jesus, USA Midwest Province of Society of Jesus, Creighton University, Province of Saint Joseph of the Capuchin Order, Sisters of Providence, Mother Joseph Province, Service Employees International Union Pension Plans Master Trust
Result: Approved at the May 7, 2019 annual meeting: 89,129,403 for, 12,271,605 against, 2,054,540 abstentions and 8,631,698 broker non-votes, which is 87.9 percent of the votes cast for and against. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility reported it as 88 percent support.
GEO Group published its first report on implementing the policy, Respect for Our Inmates and Detainees, in September 2019. The investors who filed said publicly that the report fell short of the standards they had asked for.
Report annually on the company's website, beginning in September 2019, on how it implements the Respect for Our Inmates and Detainees part of its human rights policy: how employees are made aware of and apply the commitment to inmate and detainee human rights, the metrics used to assess human rights performance and any process for independent outside verification of them, and how shortcomings in human rights performance are remedied.
With Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergymen, Dominican Sisters of Hope, Congregation of St. Joseph, US Central and Southern Province, Society of Jesus, USA Midwest Province of Society of Jesus, Creighton University, Province of Saint Joseph of the Capuchin Order, Sisters of Providence, Mother Joseph Province, Service Employees International Union Pension Plans Master Trust
Result: Approved at the May 7, 2019 annual meeting: 89,129,403 for, 12,271,605 against, 2,054,540 abstentions and 8,631,698 broker non-votes, which is 87.9 percent of the votes cast for and against. ICCR and the filers reported it as 88 percent support. GEO had asked the SEC for permission to leave the proposal out of its proxy on four grounds, Rule 14a-8(i)(2), (i)(3), (i)(6) and (i)(7), and the staff declined to concur on any of them, finding that the proposal transcends ordinary business matters.
GEO published its first implementation report, Respect for Our Inmates and Detainees, in September 2019. In a letter made public on 18 November 2019 the filers said the report falls far short of expectations and fails to meet current standards for human rights policies and processes. In February 2026 Reuters reported that Jesuit-led investors said GEO had rejected a further shareholder vote on its human rights conduct, ended talks on facility visits and reduced its human rights reporting.
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Common Ground of the American People's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.