Regions' decision to sever link with private prison company 'a win' for Alabama activists
Alabama’s largest bank has taken a financial stand against private prisons, a decision made for racial equity reasons after executives held a meeting with a local Black Lives Matter chapter and other activists to "receive feedback on the issue of private prisons," according to a statement.
Regions, headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, a city that is 76% Black, announced in January that it would not renew its credit agreement with private prison company CoreCivic after the current contract ends in 2023.
In a statement, officials said in-part, “Regions Bank is 100% committed to creating more inclusive prosperity and advancing racial equity...We listened closely to concerns that were shared, and we appreciate the candid feedback we received."
The decision came three days after the bank held a meeting with Cara McClure, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Birmingham; Joshua Thompson, a college student and board member of Alabama Students Against Prisons; and Lamar Black, co-founder of religious social justice non-profit Faith and Works.
“For the headquarters of your bank to be in a city so predominantly African American, but you’re actually helping a company that kind of perpetrates mass incarceration and has human rights violations on file, that’s not needed,” said Black of Faith and Works.
Alabama ranks among the nation’s highest incarceration rates. Only 27% of Alabamians are Black, but Black prisoners make up 56% of those incarcerated.
'On the right side of history'
Last summer, after the death of George Floyd sparked a nationwide racial justice movement, CEO John Turner issued a letter acknowledging systemic racism and made a $12 million commitment to invest more heavily in wealth building initiatives for communities of color. In 2018, Regions established the Diversity and Inclusion Center of Expertise and organized conversations about race and stereotypes at various branches.
“I was impressed with the work they were doing, but on the other hand, if they’re supporting mass incarceration, that sounds like a contradiction to me,” McClure said. “I think what happened in 2020, which we call Freedom 2020, played a huge role.
"We told them they could be on the right side of history if they wanted to.”
At the Jan. 26 meeting, McClure recalls one Regions representative saying the bank’s dealings with CoreCivic go back approximately 20 years.
For McClure, that “triggered memories” of life in Birmingham in the early 90s, when she said familiar faces from neighborhoods and the local club scene started “disappearing into the prison system" due to the war on drugs and Alabama’s Habitual Felony Offender Act.
Also known as the “three strikes” rule, 75% of Alabama prisoners serving life without parole under the Habitual Offender Act are Black, according to non-profit advocacy organization Alabama Appleseed. The non profit is one of several groups that have pushed Regions to divest from its CoreCivic agreement in recent years. Executive director Carla Crowder applauded the decision.
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“I think in a state like Alabama, Regions could have gotten away with it,” Crowder said. “The fact they took this turn and decided for race equity reasons to step away is remarkable. It’s harder for Regions to do than a bank headquartered in New York or Chicago. It was a really bold statement.”
Cutting ties with a company profiting from an 'unconstitutional' system
CoreCivic owns 115 correctional facilities, according to their website, none of which are in Alabama. However, the decision is a meaningful one for Regions, the only Fortune 500 company in Alabama. It also comes at a time when CoreCivic is gaining a major foothold in the state.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey recently signed an agreement allowing CoreCovic to build and lease two of the state’s three new mega prisons. This is part of a $3 billion plan to expand an overcrowded prison system currently facing a Department of Justice lawsuit for inhumane conditions.
Regions, in addition to preemptively ending its contract with CoreCivic, will not fund the new prison construction in Alabama.
In a statement, CoreCivic spokesperson Amanda Gilchrist said the company has secured financing from another bank, though details were not made available.
By not renewing its credit agreement with CoreCivic, Regions is cutting ties with a company that will soon profit from a prison system the DOJ lawsuit called “unconstitutional.”
The DOJ filed the lawsuit in December 2020 after the Alabama Department of Corrections failed to address unsanitary conditions, excessive force by security staff, rampant drug use, and “daily” risk of violence outlined in a 2019 DOJ review.
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CoreCivic has faced similar scrutiny.
A 2019 report found that CoreCivic’s private-run Tennessee prisons had homicide rates four times higher than the state’s public facilities. CoreCivic has also faced accusations of inhumane conditions in Hawaii, Idaho and Kansas.
In an emailed statement, Gilchrist called the reports of unjust treatment a “lies-based campaign against our company that isn’t solving a single problem in our criminal justice system.” Gilchrist said private prisons are not the driver of mass incarceration and that "only 8 percent of inmates are cared for in facilities run by private contractors."
The same day Regions emailed McClure to say they’d be ending their dealings with CoreCivic, President Joe Biden cited the need for racial equity as he signed an executive order for the Department of Justice to end its use of private prisons, which he said “consistently underperform Federal facilities with respect to correctional services, programs, and resources.”
“More than two million people are currently incarcerated in the United States, including a disproportionate number of people of color,” Biden said in the order. “...To decrease incarceration levels, we must reduce profit-based incentives to incarcerate by phasing out the Federal Government’s reliance on privately operated criminal detention facilities.”
Still 'more work to be done'
The CoreCivic decision does not completely cut Regions’ ties with private prisons. The bank also has a contract with GEO, which operates private prisons and ICE detention centers across the nation but has none in Alabama.
McClure acknowledged that “there is more work to be done."
She said she has been in contact with activist groups across the country who are working to pressure other banks into ending their contracts with CoreCivic. She also worked to put up billboards in four major Alabama cities protesting the culture of incarceration and the new prison expansion.
“It was a win, but I didn’t even know how historic the win was until folks were contacting us after,” McClure said. “There are so many organizations around Alabama fighting against the prison system and we just played a very small but important role. It showed that activism is strong, powerful and people-powered.”
News tips? Questions? Call reporter Andrew Yawn at 985-285-7689 or email him at ayawn@gannett.com. Sign up for The American South newsletter. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.