Federal investigation targets prison | The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

NASHVILLE, Tennessee – The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an investigation into Tennessee's largest prison, where officials say violence and sexual abuse have not been addressed for years, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Between July 2022 and June 2023, at least 196 assaults, 90 cases of sexual misconduct, two murders and 15 other deaths that the facility described as “accidental” occurred at the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center in Hartsville, Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke said in a video conference. In a single three-week period in early 2024 alone, there were five stabbings, she said. Clarke said large quantities of contraband were also seized, including 97 knives seized in June 2023.

“In our country, people do not give up their constitutional rights at the prison door,” Clarke said. “Every person incarcerated in a prison or detention center retains the fundamental right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.”

She pointed out that while Brentwood, Tennessee-based CoreCivic owns and operates the Trousdale prison, it is ultimately the state of Tennessee that is responsible for ensuring that the rights of prisoners there are not violated.

Dorinda Carter, a spokeswoman for the Department of Correction, said, “We are aware of the investigation and TDOC will cooperate fully.”

The federal “pattern or practice” investigation will include reviews of prison records and misconduct reports, site visits and interviews with prison officials, inmates and activists. If the state is found to have engaged in systematic misconduct, the Justice Department will release a public report and outline minimum actions for Tennessee and prison officials. Justice officials said they notified state authorities of the investigation Tuesday morning.

PROBLEM-RICH HISTORY

Trousdale, which houses about 2,500 inmates, has struggled since it opened in 2016. At the time, after just four months of full operation, the prison had to temporarily stop accepting new inmates due to a series of problems, including a stabbing. In a memo obtained by The Associated Press at the time, Department of Corrections officials complained that guards did not control housing units, did not properly count inmates and placed inmates in solitary confinement without documented reason.

Since then, Trousdale has had to pay millions of dollars in fines. Problems include chronic staffing shortages that audits say put both inmates and correctional officers at risk. And although both Tennessee Correction leaders and CoreCivic have repeatedly promised to fix the problems, some of the same issues reported in a 2017 state audit resurfaced in 2020 and 2023 audits.

Among the findings of the 2023 Tennessee state audit were a 188% turnover rate among officers at Trousdale in the previous fiscal year. State facilities had an average turnover rate of 37% during the same period. The turnover has led to severe staff shortages, including many critical positions that went vacant. In one case, a single officer was tasked with overseeing 360 prisoners. One officer was quoted in the report as saying, “While I'm at Trousdale, I feel unsafe all the time.”

In another case, a correctional officer described how staff shortages contributed to a troubling environment for inmates.

“If you are attacked, you will be attacked until the inmates get tired of hitting you” because there are no correctional officers there to help, the officer wrote.

None of the five knife attacks that occurred within three weeks in January and February were life-threatening, although according to local media reports, rescue helicopters were dispatched to each incident and at least three inmates were taken to hospital.

Two of the attacks, which were unrelated, occurred on the same day. A lawsuit filed last year alleged that understaffing and negligence by correctional officers contributed to the death of an inmate.

In May 2020, numerous Covid-19 cases in the prison led the small county of Trousdale County to report the highest Covid infection rate per capita in the U.S. The Tennessee Department of Correction reported at one point that more than half of the prison's then 2,444 inmates had tested positive.

INVESTIGATION WELCOME

Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a prison reform nonprofit that has repeatedly called on the Justice Department to investigate the Trousdale Turner case, welcomed the investigation.

The nonprofit had also raised concerns about curfews lasting up to a month, cutting off inmates from family visits and even phone calls.

“People in Trousdale live in fear for their lives every day,” said Matthew Charles, a former inmate and senior policy adviser to the group, adding that he hopes such an investigation will lead to change.

Nashville attorney Daniel Horwitz, who has repeatedly sued CoreCivic, praised in a statement the Justice Department's announcement Tuesday that it would investigate conditions at the prison.

“The heinous abuses that regularly occur at the chronically understaffed facility are not hidden and have been documented year after year in dozens of wrongful death lawsuits and other incidents brought by our firm and others against CoreCivic and its employees,” he said.

U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Henry Leventis pointed out at Tuesday's press conference that the state has repeatedly renewed its contract for the Trousdale plant despite the problems.

The company has deep roots in Tennessee and is a prominent campaign donor that generally enjoys the support of the state's two-thirds Republican majority. CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger has expressed interest in a possible run for governor of Tennessee in 2026.

“The safety and dignity of every person in our care is the highest priority of our leadership and staff at Trousdale Turner Correctional Center,” said Steven Owen, vice president of communications at CoreCivic, in a statement. He added that the company has worked closely with the Tennessee Department of Correction to improve security conditions.

“We take this matter very seriously and are committed to working closely with TDOC and USDOJ officials to address the areas of concern,” Owen said.

Tennessee has four prisons that operate under contracts with CoreCivic. The current state budget allocates $233 million for the four facilities, including $80 million for Trousdale.

Tennessee law allows only one privately run state prison facility, but state agencies have reportedly gotten around those restrictions by leasing facilities to counties, which in turn hire subcontractors to hire private management firms. CoreCivic operates at least four of Tennessee's 14 state prisons, including Trousdale Turner, according to the state Department of Corrections website.

The Biden administration has opposed private prison companies like CoreCivic, one of the largest private, for-profit prison operators in the country. The industry accounts for only a small portion of federal and state incarceration but rakes in billions of dollars annually.

In his first week in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing the Justice Department not to renew its contracts with private correctional facility operators.

Information for this article was contributed by Travis Loller and Jonathan Mattise of The Associated Press, Aishvarya Kavi of The New York Times and David Nakamura of The Washington Post.