FreeCap Announces its 2023 Criminal Justice Report
We are excited to publish our second Criminal Justice Report covering the S&P 100! When we first started our research in 2019, we embarked on a mission to understand how corporations impact current and formerly incarcerated people. Today, we have created the most comprehensive view of how companies profit from the prison industrial complex.
This report analyzes companies' programs and policies regarding fair chance hiring and prison risk mitigation. We also highlight these companies' progress since 2021 using data from our first Criminal Justice Report.
This year, I’m excited to announce two key important updates we’ve made to advance and expand the scope of our research:
First, we broadened our data collection by creating a new dataset that tracks the exact dollar amount companies make from prisons. Our new Prison Vending Relationship dataset aggregates payments between 3,000 companies and corrections departments across the United States and quantifies how much each company has made since 2019. The dataset covers 33 states, representing over 70% of the US incarcerated population. By spanning the entire Russell 3000 Index with historical trend data, we can better quantify a company’s impact on mass incarceration at a scale that has never been done before.
Second, we adjusted our scoring methodology to focus our data collection on metrics that are collectable, actionable, and impactful. By streamlining our data collection from ten metrics down to seven, we can better ensure data accuracy and offer clearer insights into the key actions that companies can take to lower their criminal justice footprint.
We’ve seen some notable trends in the ESG industry since the publishing of our 2021 report. Namely, we’ve noticed a significant increase in fair chance hiring efforts. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a push for diversity in the workplace and increase in EEO-1 data disclosure. Looking forward, we hope to see companies reduce barriers to hiring justice-involved individuals as an extension of these inclusion efforts.
Progress like this is great to see, but we still have a long way to go. Reports like this one are needed to help investors and companies create a more equitable world for justice-involved individuals. By utilizing FreeCap’s criminal justice dataset, investors can better manage the ESG risk in their portfolios by screening out companies who have significant involvement in the prison industrial complex and positively screening in companies who are leaders in fair chance hiring and prison risk mitigation. Our data can also direct activism campaigns, including shareholder engagement efforts related to criminal justice, and serves as an opportunity to consider our role as ESG investors in ending the mass incarceration crisis.
In solidarity,
Tanay Tatum-Edwards
Founder & CEO
FreeCap Financial
