Report Marks 3M, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Stanley Black & Decker for Divestment Based on Human Rights Violation Screen
NATIONWIDE — Today, criminal justice advocacy organization Worth Rises published the 2020 edition of its annual report The Prison Industry: Mapping Private Sector Players. Now covering 4,135 corporations across the 12 sectors, this year’s report introduces a harm score for each corporation that measures involvement in human rights violations in the prison industry. It also flags corporations that support prison labor and lists the names of lead executive officers at some of the largest corporations.
“Corporations that profit off of mass incarceration have skirted public scrutiny, often intentionally, to avoid blowback for their role in exploiting the marginalized communities our punishment system targets,” said Bianca Tylek, Executive Director for Worth Rises. “This year’s report shines a bright light on these corporations, and for the first time ever, offers an assessment of the harm they inflict on these communities. Investors and financial advisors who want to screen and divest their investment portfolios for exposure to the prison industry will find the new harm scores indispensable. For advocates and consumers, the harm scores can serve as a starting point for targeted corporate activism and campaigns.”
Corporations have built a multi-billion-dollar industry capitalizing on the disproportionately Black, Brown and low income communities targeted by the criminal legal system. Of the 4,135 entries in this year’s updated database, 385 are publicly traded corporations, 95 of which are recommended for divestment. Among these corporations are many household names like 3M, Amazon, Aramark, Honeywell, and Microsoft. There are also 118 investment firms that own prison profiteers, 61 of which are recommended for divestment.
“I spent more than 24 years in prison. I saw how corporations exploited people from telephone calls to commissary to labor,” said Robert Rose III in the report’s foreword. “When I was released, I was excited to work with Worth Rises as a researcher for The Prison Industry: Mapping Private Sector Players report. It allowed me to continue the work I was doing on the inside, fact-finding to expose the corporations exploiting people whose lives have been irreparably turned upside down by mass incarceration—not just those behind bars, but also our families.”
The Prison Industry: Mapping Private Sector Players aggregates essential information to help advocates, litigators, journalists, investors, artists and the public challenge corporations that profit off mass incarceration and mass surveillance. Along with its expansive data, the report includes a summary of the prison industry’s 12 sectors, noting key players and recent developments in each, and a detailed methodology of Worth Rises’ data-gathering.
WHAT’S NEW IN 2020?
A harm score for each publicly traded and investment firm-owned corporation that measures the engagement of each corporation in human rights violations along three criteria: the salience or gravity of the violation, their responsibility for the violation, and their responsiveness to advocacy engagement
A flag for corporations that support prison labor either by directly using prison labor or participating in supply chains that include prison labor
More than 100 private equity firms that invest in the prison industry
The names of lead executive for publicly traded and investment firm-owned corporations
Available lobbying expenditures and updated corporate campaign contributions made by private corporations that derive all their revenues from the prison industry
Updated financials with the most recently available data as of year-end 2019
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