USA: JPMorgan to stop financing private prisons and detention centers after protests

“We will no longer bank the private prison industry,” a company spokesperson said.

JPMorgan Chase & Co has decided to stop financing private operators of prisons and detention centers, which have become targets of protests over Trump administration immigration policies.

“We will no longer bank the private prison industry,” a company spokesman told Reuters. The decision is a result of bank’s ongoing evaluations of the costs and benefits of serving different industries, he said.

JPMorgan is one of several banks that have underwritten bonds or syndicated loans for CoreCivic Inc and Geo Group Inc, the two major private prison operators in the United States. In 2018, banks, including Bank of America Corp and Wells Fargo & Co raised roughly $1.8 billion in debt over three deals for CoreCivic and GEO Group, according to Refinitiv data.

Wells Fargo said in January that it is reducing its relationship with the prison industry as part of its “environmental and social risk management” process.

“Our credit exposure to private prison companies has significantly decreased and is expected to continue to decline, and we are not actively marketing to that sector,” Wells Fargo said in its “Business Standards Report” for 2018.

Prison finance is small business for JPMorgan, the biggest bank in the U.S. by assets. JPMorgan was a leader in 1,153 loan deals worth $354 billion across all industries, according to Refinitiv data.

Prison companies account for about 10 percent of federal and state prison beds, according to Moody’s Investors Service. But about two-thirds of people held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are in private detention centers, S&P Global Ratings estimated last year.

Moody’s and S&P Global have speculative grade, or junk, credit ratings on CoreCivic and GEO Group partly because their revenues are at risk to changes in government policy and public scrutiny of companies profiting from detention.

After the Obama administration in August 2016 directed the Bureau of Prisons to phase out federal use of private prisons, shares of both companies plunged more than 40 percent. One month after Donald Trump became president, the order was rescinded and the stocks rebounded.

Activism against the financing of private prisons heated up after revelations that undocumented minors were being separated from their adult parents or guardians and being held in detention centers.

TRUMP REVERSES POLICY¶

The Trump administration reversed its separation policy after a public outcry and many children were released from detention centers and reunited with their parents. Others were sent to foster homes or to live with relatives in the United States.

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