A majority of GEO Group shareholders, including some described as “activist shareholders” by Miami New Times, passed a resolution demanding the private prison company better report abuses. “The activist shareholders—who work with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), a group founded to force companies to divest from apartheid South Africa—pushed GEO in 2013 to develop its first human rights policy.”
Now, Miami New Times continues, “because reports of human rights abuses have continued, the investors now want GEO to release a new human rights report by September.” Reports of abuses within GEO Group’s walls are as disturbing as they are long. In a report last year, immigrant detainees at the Adelanto Detention Facility in California said they were verbally abused by guards, including being called “fucking blacks” and “Haitian trash.”
“The investors' letter doesn't mention some other major issues that have sprung up at GEO facilities recently. Most notably, José Ibarra Bucio, a 27-year-old immigrant detainee at GEO's Adelanto Processing Center outside of Los Angeles, fell into a coma and died earlier this year.” In 2017, Adelanto had three detainee deaths in the span of three months, including Osmar Epifanio Gonzalez-Gadba. He was found hanging in his cell and later died after being taken off life support.
It’s more likely that some of these shareholders are more concerned about GEO Group’s bad press than about the dignity of detainees. “The company's reputation has become so politically toxic that every major Democratic candidate for Florida governor in 2018 loudly refused to take GEO's money,” and JPMorgan Chase recently severed ties too, following intense heat from activists. Rather than to better report abuses, how about not have any abuses at all? Better yet, no private prisons at all. In the meantime, any and all heat directed at GEO Group needs to stay on.