Citizens Bank Ends Financing for Private Prison Companies, Local Campaign Credits Public Pressure

Citizens Bank announced it will cease financing agreements with two private prison contractors due to new business realities. Meanwhile, advocates, including a Cleveland faith-based coalition, cited a recent campaign against the bank as the driving force.

Greater Cleveland Congregations, in partnership with a similar faith-based group in Boston and the De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition, had put public pressure on Citizens Bank to end financing processes used by CoreCivic and GEO Group, two of the largest private prison operators in the U.S.

“Given how these companies’ capital needs and financing structures have evolved, and their reduced need for a bank with Citizens’ full range of capabilities, Citizens has determined that it is now appropriate to exit the credit facilities for these clients,” Citizens said in a statement. “This is a business decision based on changed commercial circumstances and does not reflect any change in our view regarding these companies’ business models or operations.”

The decision comes almost a month after GCC staged a protest at a Citizens Bank in University Heights on June 25, about two weeks after the bank refused to meet with the coalition to discuss its financial relationship with private prisons.

Followers of the coalition pledged to remove a combined $24 million from Citizens as a boycott if the bank didn’t cancel contracts tied to ICE.

“Citizens Bank uses our money to finance the operators of human warehouses,” the website of the campaign, Not With Our Money, reads. “These inhumane private prisons are places of overcrowding, neglect, malnutrition, isolation, suffering and preventable death.”

Last year, the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown, one of the largest CoreCivic prison in the country, grew by a little over 2,000 beds (and 784 new detainees) in a contract with ICE extending through 2032. CoreCivic signed contracts in four other states, activating thousands of new ICE beds.

Keisha Krumm, the executive director of Greater Cleveland Congregations, said that the coalition’s pressure came from more of a constitutional grounding than a response to any one ICE incident.

“This is what organizing looks like—aimed, focused strategy grounded in the principles of ‘We the People,’ moving corporate interests to change course.” she told Scene in a statement Monday afternoon. “GCC calls on Citizens to provide clear, public confirmation and a timeline for the wind-down of these credit facilities.”

Citizens pointed out its ties to hundreds of pro-immigrant nonprofits and its high rank on Newsweek’s most charitable company list.

“None of these virtues seem to matter to the activist groups, as they have tried to define us through a narrow lens inconsistent with who we are,” the company said in a statement.