Private prison contractors have been around for a long time, but the concept of handing over management of an entire prison to a private company, to be squeezed for profit, only came into existence about 40 years ago. Private prisons began in the ’80s in Nashville, when a former Republican Party chairman and other similarly influential figures cofounded Corrections Corporation of America. The United States private prison boom, and the private prisons that now exist all around the world, began there.
In 2016 CCA rebranded to become CoreCivic, but it’s still headquartered in Nashville and that’s where its political ties run deepest. At the time CCA was formed, the governor’s wife owned stock in the company. (Of course, in order to avoid any conflicts of interest, she offloaded it for a mere $100,000.) Today, CoreCivic lobbies heavily, funneling donations to Tennessee politicians including Governor Bill Lee (R) and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R).
CoreCivic runs four of the 14 facilities in the Tennessee adult prison system, including South Central Correctional Facility where I’ve been housed for the past decade or so. About twice as many people are killed in these four CoreCivic facilities as in all 10 that are state-run.
In recent years the situation has become even more dire: There is no longer the hope of transferring to a state facility. Those in the CoreCivic prisons are simply left to suffer and die.
Shortly after Strada’s arrival, we were told that there would be no more incentive transfers.
We used to have a well-established, if not always formalized, process for requesting what everyone here knows as “incentive transfers.” If we’d maintained good behavior for at least one year, worked consistently and had staff willing to recommend us, those things would be factored in when we put in a request to go to a different facility. Most of the time incentive transfers were requested in order to be closer to family.
In January 2023 the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) got a new commissioner: Frank Strada, formerly of the Arizona Department of Corrections and a 28-year veteran of the federal Bureau of Prisons system. Shortly after Strada’s arrival, we were told that per a mandate he’d issued, there would be no more incentive transfers.
Strada did not respond to Filter‘s request for comment. TDOC Communications Director Dorinda Carter told Filter, “We do not have anything to share at this time.”
CoreCivic owns more US correctional facilities than any other company; it reported $2 billion in revenue for 2024. Tennessee has fined CoreCivic almost $45 million for contract violations across all four of the private facilities, while continuing to renew those contracts for almost $250 million. So it doesn’t actually collect fines from CoreCivic, it just awards slightly less money than it could have.
More than half the people who died in TDOC custody between 2020 and 2023 were in CoreCivic facilities.
Out of the 529 people who died in TDOC custody (not including medical units) between 2020 and 2023, more than half were in CoreCivic facilities. In August 2024 the Department of Justice opened an investigation into Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, which CoreCivic opened in 2016 and has never operated within contract compliance. The staff turnover rate in 2023 was 188 percent.
We can’t request transfers to anywhere safer or closer to home, but whenever a South Central prisoner is unexpectedly rounded up in the middle of the night, they’re being taken to Trousdale.
Prompted by the violence at Trousdale, a bill currently advancing through the state Senate would require TDOC to “reduce the population at a private prison facility by 10 percent, if the death rate of inmates of the facility under contract is twice the death rate of an equivalent state-operated facility [and] continue the reduction in population until the conditions have improved.” We would be redistributed among whatever facilities had the available bedspace.
This is heartening, but its goal is to penalize CoreCivic, not protect people in custody. Private prison operators get paid per prisoner, so the requirement would represent a 10-percent cut of those profits. Unchecked gang violence is a daily occurrence at South Central, but until we become twice as likely to die, there’s no reason the people enslaving us should make any less money off the situation.
A separate bill would support requests for transfer to “home county institutions.”
In February, legislators introduced a separate proposal that would formalize something very much like an incentive transfer.
The “Proximity Placement and Family Visitations Incentive Act” would support requests for transfer to “home county institutions” in order to foster community ties and make it easier for families to visit, as well as incentivize good behavior and reduce recidivism. To be eligible we’d need to have a record showing no disciplinary incidents within the past 12 months, and actively participate in whatever programming is available at our facility. (South Central offers no programming.)
But it would only compel TDOC to file reports with relevant statistics.
“The proposed legislation does not require DOC to transfer inmates to a different correctional facility,” the legislative Fiscal Review Committee stated in its evaluation of the bill. “[T]herefore, it is assumed that correctional facilities will continue to house inmates where they are assigned.”
That bill was taken off a House subcommittee calendar on March 18. CoreCivic, meanwhile, is getting approved for a $7 million budget increase.
Filter Deputy Editor Kastalia Medrano contributed to this report
Image of Commissioner Frank Strada (left) via Tennessee Department of Correction/YouTube
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