Is the Gates Foundation Still Investing in Private Prisons?
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/12/gates-foundation-still-investing-private-prisons
One year after Mother Jones reported on multi-million-dollar investments made on behalf of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that appeared to contradict the foundation's mission, the philanthropy's trust will not say if one of its most controversial holdings is still on its books.
In its 2012 tax filing, the Gates Foundation Trust, which manages the foundation's endowment, reported a $2.2 million investment in the GEO Group, a Florida-based prison company. In its most recent tax forms, the Gates Foundation Trust listed an investment in the GEO Group worth more than $2 million.
In recent years, the GEO Group has faced accusations of detainee abuse and substandard care in multiple states. In 2012, Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Office of Detention Oversight reported that GEO Group's Adelanto facility near Los Angeles had committed "several egregious errors" in administering medical care to detainees. (GEO Group has repeatedly dismissed allegations of mistreatment.) More recently, a group of former immigrant detainees in Colorado sued the company for making them work around the prison for minimal pay, sometimes under the threat of solitary confinement. (The GEO Group said detainees were working under a "volunteer work program" and that its $1-per-day wages met federal standards.) The Gates Foundation Trust did not respond to requests for comment directed through a foundation spokesperson.
According to the Gates Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gatesthe only members of the trust's boardhave defined areas that the trust will not invest in, "such as companies whose profit model is centrally tied to corporate activity that [Bill and Melinda Gates] find egregious." Tobacco companies fall into that category.