This category includes publicly traded companies that provide U.S. prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers with tools and technologies used to control, track, and monitor the people they incarcerate. These companies include, for example:
- Firearm manufacturers and makers of "less-lethal" weapons, riot control gear, and other weapons and related equipment.
- Companies that provide prisons with CCTV and body-worn cameras, sensors, access control systems, and other surveillance equipment.
- Companies that provide technologies for monitoring, recording, and/or analyzing phone calls and other prison communications.
- Companies that provide prison management systems and software used to monitor incarcerated individuals' daily activities. Many of these systems use biometrics and facial recognition technology.
- Companies that provide technologies for locating and extracting data from digital devices, such as phones and cars, used by incarcerated individuals or taken from people upon arrest.
People who are incarcerated have no privacy rights and are routinely subjected to invasive searches and other forms of surveillance and control, including strip and body cavity searches; cell raids; and mail, internet, telephone, and visitation monitoring. This makes prisons prime marketing targets for evermore invasive tracking, surveillance, and monitoring technologies manufactured by for-profit companies.