Article 5: No torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
Helpful
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Most torture and degrading treatment happens in state custody, policing and war, well outside any company's reach. But a documented slice runs through private detention. CoreCivic operates Stewart Detention Center in Georgia. A 2023 unannounced federal inspection there found detainees improperly disciplined instead of housed appropriately, high- and low-custody detainees wrongly mixed together, and only half of medical sick-call requests resulting in a detainee being seen. GEO Group's own shareholders voted 88% in 2019 to demand human rights reporting on treatment of detainees, but investors later said the resulting report fell far short, and in 2024 GEO refused to let a similar proposal go to a vote at all. Corporate conduct decides conditions inside these specific facilities. It does not decide the fate of the right worldwide.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Companies such as CoreCivic and GEO Group run a meaningful share of U.S. immigration detention facilities, and federal inspectors have documented medical neglect and improper segregation inside them. But the overwhelming majority of torture and cruel treatment worldwide happens in state prisons, policing, war and domestic settings that no public company touches. Corporate conduct is therefore a bounded rather than decisive factor.
Detention operators have resisted independent oversight of conditions in facilities they run and, in one case, blocked a proposed human rights disclosure vote outright, which narrows accountability for conditions in their own facilities but does not obstruct anti-torture norms or enforcement generally.
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
- Results of an Unannounced Inspection of ICE's Stewart Detention Center, DHS Office of Inspector General, 2023-07-27
- Investors say GEO Group is ill-prepared to guard against human rights risks, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2019
- Priests Say ICE Contractor GEO Rejected Vote on Human Rights Review, Sojourners, 2025
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Led the 2019 shareholder resolution asking GEO Group for verified human rights performance metrics, which passed with 88% support, and a follow-up 2024 proposal that GEO refused to put to a vote.
Priests Say ICE Contractor GEO Rejected Vote on Human Rights Review, Sojourners, 2025
Co-filed the 2019 GEO Group shareholder resolution on human rights performance metrics for detainee treatment.
Co-filed the 2019 GEO Group shareholder resolution on human rights performance metrics for detainee treatment.
2 campaigns on record
Disclose whether GEO's services contribute to violations of international human rights law and the material risks that could expose the company to.
Result: GEO Group told the SEC in a December 30, 2024 letter that it would not allow shareholders to vote on the proposal, calling its claims false and misleading.
no vote was held; the filers noted GEO had also scaled back its human rights reporting and ended facility-visit discussions with them since 2019.
Priests Say ICE Contractor GEO Rejected Vote on Human Rights Review, Sojourners
Report on how employees apply GEO's human rights commitments to detainees, disclose verified performance metrics, and explain how shortcomings are addressed.
With Mercy Investment Services, Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investment
Result: Passed with 88% shareholder support at the 2019 annual meeting.
GEO produced a report, but the filing investors said it fell far short of expectations, contained significant gaps, and reflected GEO's decision not to collaborate with them on its content.
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.