We recently published a list of 11 Best Prison and Law Enforcement Stocks to Buy According to Analysts. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Identiv, Inc. (NASDAQ:INVE) stands against other best prison and law enforcement stocks to buy.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, an estimated 11.7 million people were detained in prisons across the globe at the end of 2019. This translates to the population of entire countries such as Belgium, Tunisia, Bolivia, or Burundi. The number of people detained in prisons has increased by over 25% since 2000. While a majority of the people imprisoned over the last two decades are men, at around 93%, the number of women in prisons is rising at a faster pace, undergoing a 33% growth as compared to a 25% rise in men.
These growing numbers are being reflected in other trends in the industry as well. According to Grand View Research, the US law enforcement PPE (personal protective equipment) industry had a market size of $839.4 million in 2021. It is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5.0% between 2022 and 2030. Since awareness regarding officer safety in riot control and tactical situations is gaining ground, it is positively impacting growth in this industry. Demand for law enforcement PPE, including face shields, protective clothing, respirator masks, goggles, and surgical masks, especially surged during the COVID-19 pandemic.
READ ALSO: 10 Best Stocks That Will Always Grow and 10 Best Telehealth Stocks to Buy Now.
Increasing Use of AI in Law Enforcement
Various other trends are also materializing in the law enforcement industry. At the end of 2024, CNBC reported that police departments across the United States are beginning to use AI to write police reports. Various companies are developing AI tools to aid police departments in easing the burden of administrative tasks, with law enforcement focusing on slashing budget pressures and crime rates while retaining and recruiting staff.
However, legal experts are simultaneously raising red flags over the increasing use of AI in police work, citing concerns such as transparency, accuracy, and potential bias. These challenges can affect the future of AI in law enforcement and policing. A significant part of the impact depends upon the extent to which such tools are used and how they are adopted in the sector. CNBC reported that Utah State Senator Stephanie Pitcher, a defense attorney with Parker & McConkie, said the following about the situation:
“For all of the potential issues that AI technology creates in terms of admissibility of evidence, in terms of being completely transparent, in terms of trying to mitigate the biases that can be introduced into the system, I just don’t know that it’s worth it.”
Our Methodology
We sifted through stock screeners, financial media reports, and ETFs to compile a list of 20 prison and law enforcement stocks and chose the top 11 with the highest analyst upside potential as of April 25, 2025. We also included the number of hedge fund holders for each stock as of fiscal Q4 2024, sourcing the hedge fund sentiment data from Insider Monkey’s database. The list is ordered in ascending order of analyst upside potential.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
A close-up of a computer monitor showing a dynamic network of cyber security components.
Identiv, Inc. (NASDAQ:INVE)
Analyst Upside: 87.50%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 12
Identiv, Inc. (NASDAQ:INVE) provides physical security and secure identification solutions, offering products such as logical access control, physical access control and video, and RFID inlays and tags. The company serves the government, airports and aviation industries, education, and healthcare.
Its operations are divided into the Premises and Identity segments. The Premises segment offers solutions addressing the premises security market for government and enterprise, including video surveillance, access control, analytics, customer experience, and more. The identity segment comprises products and solutions that allow secure access to information, serve the logical access and cyber security market, and safeguard assets in the Internet of Things with radio frequency identification.
Identiv, Inc. (NASDAQ:INVE) has made the successful shift to a pure-play provider of specialty RFID and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) solutions. This strategic transition bolsters its financial position and corresponds to its focus on high-value markets following the sale of the company’s physical security business. Identiv, Inc. (NASDAQ:INVE) has shifted 75% of its RFID production to a low-cost Thai facility and has plans to complete the transition by the end of fiscal Q2 2025. Investors are bullish on the stock as this shift is anticipated to significantly improve gross margins, even when it has temporarily affected financial results. In a report released on March 4, Anthony Stoss from Craig-Hallum maintained a Buy rating on Identiv, Inc. (NASDAQ:INVE).
Overall, INVE ranks 3rd on our list of the best prison and law enforcement stocks to buy. While we acknowledge the potential for INVE as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than INVE but trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
