Barclays Bond Deal Shows Limits to Vow on Financing Prison Firms

Two years ago, Barclays Plc joined a chorus of major banks announcing that they would no longer provide new financing to private prison companies, whose model of profiting from incarceration has drawn controversy for years.

But the bank is now poised to raise $634 million for Alabama lockups to be built and owned by carceral giant CoreCivic Inc.

Barclays is the lead underwriter for a bond issue scheduled to be sold through the Public Finance Authority, an agency in Wisconsin set up to rent its access to the municipal-debt market. In this case, the debt is being sold ...