In June, New York City made headlines as the first major United States city to fully divest from for-profit prison investments. The full move - from conception to consideration and through completion of sales of existing shares - took less than a year. And, as seen in emails recently released by the NYC Office of the Comptroller, the turnaround from when the Office issued their divestiture directive went out on Friday, May 19, 2017 …
until their accounts were private prison-free was nearly immediate.
Many of the firms tasked with handling the City’s investments and pension fund had responded to the direction the same day; all had cleared the affected assets within a week.
In all, the City sold approximately $48 million in for-profit prison stock from CoreCivic, the GEO Group, and UK-based G4S.
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