Your parole has been denied... SunTrust bank just announced it will no longer do business with private prisons or migrant detention centers. It's following JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America, which have all boycotted the industry this year as well. The trigger? Reports of inhumane conditions in border prisons that are sheltering unaccompanied children.
PS: Georgia-based SunTrust is mid-merger with North Carolina-based BB&T. Afterward it will awkwardly be called "Truist."
Let's look at the prisons affected... GEO Group and CoreCivic are the two biggest publicly-traded and for-profit prison companies. They get paid by the federal and state governments to incarcerate prisoners for them (about $24K per year, per prisoner). GEO Group and CoreCivic both think the banks are caving to political pressure.
Reputation and profits — it's a tradeoff... The banks are turning down potential profits to protect their reputation among the community and with their employees. Sometimes, it's the other way around, like HSBC, which became the top bank of Saudi Arabia despite the nation's human rights abuses and recent murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.