Article 11: Presumption of innocence; no retroactive criminal law
Helpful
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Most of this article is a pure government obligation. Whether a criminal defendant is presumed innocent at trial is a matter of law and of prosecutorial and judicial conduct. So is whether a state can punish conduct that was not a crime when committed. No corporate actor is in the room. One corner does involve business: the commercial cash-bail industry keeps people who have not been convicted of anything in jail because they cannot pay, which is a form of punishment before guilt is proven. Bail-bond insurers have lobbied against state reform bills that would end this. Investor action has worked at the margins. In 2019 and 2020 the ACLU and allied groups persuaded the private-equity firm Endeavour Capital to exit its ownership of Aladdin Bail Bonds, the country's largest bail bond company. This was a private-equity divestment campaign rather than a public-company shareholder vote.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
The commercial cash-bail industry jails legally unconvicted, presumptively innocent people based on ability to pay rather than risk, a genuine corporate lever on this right. But several states (New Jersey, Illinois) have ended cash bail through legislation alone, showing that companies changing is not necessary for the outcome. No corporate lever touches the retroactive-law clause at all.
Bail-bond insurers and trade groups have lobbied state legislatures against specific bail-reform bills, narrowing and slowing reform in some states, but reform has still passed in others over that opposition, so it is a contributing rather than primary obstacle nationally.
1 and 1, higher of the two, gives Helpful
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
- Following ACLU report, Endeavour Capital exits bail bond investment, Private Equity Stakeholder Project, 2020
- States are trying to change a system that keeps poor people in jail. The bail industry is blocking them., CNN, 2019-08-30
- GEO Group Under Pressure from Shareholders on Human Rights Policy, Prison Legal News, 2019-09-05
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Published the report that prompted Endeavour Capital to exit its ownership of Aladdin Bail Bonds, working alongside Color of Change and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project.
Filed a human rights resolution at GEO Group, the private prison and detention operator, that passed with 88% support at the May 2019 annual meeting.
GEO Group Under Pressure from Shareholders on Human Rights Policy, Prison Legal News
2 campaigns on record
Exit ownership of the commercial cash-bail industry, which the groups argued jails people presumed innocent based on wealth rather than risk.
Result: Endeavour Capital exited its Aladdin Bail Bonds investment in early 2020
Endeavour Capital confirmed it had exited its investment in Aladdin Bail Bonds.
Report on how the company operationalizes its human rights commitments, with independently verified metrics, across its detention facilities.
With Mercy Investment Services, Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investment
Result: passed with 88% shareholder support at the May 2019 annual meeting
GEO Group produced a human rights report by September 2019, but the filers publicly said it fell short of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
GEO Group Under Pressure from Shareholders on Human Rights Policy, Prison Legal News
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 Universal Declaration of Human Rights's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.