C*, a 39-year-old Army veteran, struggled to adjust to daily life after coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq. When he was sent to South Central Correctional Facility, a medium-security private prison in Tennessee, it felt like being back in a war zone, but alone.
“When I first got locked up … all the noise, people screaming, slamming dominos, was making me have flashbacks,” C told Filter. “My body reacts like a bomb is exploding. I used to get nauseous. As vets we are used to order, rules, working as a team, fighting the same cause—chaos fucks our minds up, badly.”
More than 100,000 veterans are estimated to be incarcerated in state and federal prisons. While some might think of prisons as places full of structure, the national understaffing crisis makes this not the case. In many ways, there is more chaos than order here.
“That’s why you don’t see many vets working in the prisons. There’s no logical structure or chain of command that means a shit,” D*, a 51-year-old Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, told Filter. “I don’t expect much of anything because they don’t have any special considerations for anybody.”
Prisons are full of people with untreated trauma, and that includes many veterans living with post-traumatic stress disorder, or “shell shock.” Everyday things like other prisoners playing dominos in the day room are triggers for a lot of vets here—slamming one down onto the steel tables does sound like a bomb.
B*, 44, served in Afghanistan and had been out of the Army less than a year when he was arrested. “It was a big adjustment,” he told Filter. “Put in a box with multiple enemies all trying to attack me—it freaked me out.”
G*, a Marine veteran who was stationed in Germany and Iran and is now serving a life sentence, echoed the stress of being surrounded by threats without any plan of action or backup. “I’m a lone soldier in a field of combatants, and just know I’m about to be taken hostage,” he told Filter. “It feels helpless, and makes me consider my own options—if I can take it and for how long.”
Several veterans incarcerated here described trying to access counseling and being told there was none, unless they took medication they didn’t necessarily want to take. Many incarcerated veterans self-medicate, which in addition to the risk of getting caught can add health complications that go untreated—like lung cancer from heavy cigarette smoking, as smoking in prisons becomes more dangerous.
“I know I could benefit from AA [and] NA and having some folks around me that understand,” H* a 48-year-old Army veteran who served as a medic in Iraq, told Filter. “But this place has none of that. I feel abandoned, and left to survive as best I can or die in the struggle. No one really cares.”
In February, a group of veterans approached administration with a proposal.
“I screwed up, just like all the other people here,” A*, serving a 20-year sentence, told Filter. “I get what I get. I have baggage and they do too. I’ve heard a lot of shit that people had to deal with before prison—drugs, gangs, abusive relationships or parents, homelessness … my shit ain’t no worse than theirs.”
Prisons are supposed to have accessible treatment for mental health conditions and substance use disorder, and educational and recreational programming to keep the mind engaged. But many resources have been shuttered since the COVID-19 pandemic. And in the case of prisons like this one, where the Tennessee Department of Correction has outsourced us to for-profit corporation CoreCivic, there’s no support at all without going into a specialized mental health or substance use disorder recovery unit. This would leave many feeling even more isolated than they do now.
There are currently over 100 veterans at South Central, nearly enough to fill a living unit pod—64 cells, 128 bunks. In February, a group of veterans here approached administration with a proposal for forming a veterans pod, as well as establishing a post of the national veterans’ organization American Legion. In recent years, incarcerated veterans have created American Legion posts in at least a dozen states, including in maximum-security prisons. They have been shown to help give vets a sense of structure and community support. Larger posts located nearby can even support them and help with fees.
It seemed like the proposal was well-received, and conversations over the summer indicated that administration planned to move forward. But when the veterans checked in around the beginning of August, they were told that essentially nothing had been done and it wasn’t a priority. CoreCivic did not respond to Filter‘s inquiry about plans for a veterans pod or American Legion post at South Central.
Dedicated housing units for veterans exist in prisons across the country, including in Tennessee. Turney Center Industrial Complex, a state-run prison an hour outside Nashville, has a housing unit where veterans can receive treatment for PTSD and substance use disorder, and get help navigating VA benefits.
Some vets incarcerated for misdemeanors, or released on community supervision, can get certain kinds of assistance from the Veterans Benefits Administration. But the VA can’t provide benefits or health care to people in the custody of another government agency, since that agency is supposed to be providing it already. Few corrections departments actually provide adequate health care, and the situation is even bleaker in prisons outsourced to private corporations.
Many vets reached by Filter said that not only would a veterans pod provide much-needed community, it would basically run itself. The remaining bunks could be filled with prisoners who were older or otherwise fit in well, as had been done once before.
In 2014, a South Central assistant warden who was a veteran himself had started a pod where all the vets could be housed together. “His goal was to create an environment of positivity and where you could receive the programing and services you needed to thrive,” H told Filter. “The pod was quieter. More structure, no problems. The cells were clean and everyone got along.”
In 2016 the assistant warden died. The pod was disbanded, veterans scattered back out across the prison.
Gangs have a strong presence in prisons, and South Central is no exception.
“Coming to prison, you feel like you should defend the victims of gangs and other predators who are trying to take advantage of the weak,” C told Filter. “But you soon realize that you no longer have your team, and you’re alone.”
Gangs have a strong presence in prisons, and South Central is no exception. Many feel that due to understaffing, administration is less willing to group all the veterans or older prisoners together in the same pod because it would further concentrate gang-affiliated prisoners in other pods, and that would result in more corrections officers quitting.
D told Filter he’d enlisted to get away from gangs. Now he’s surrounded by them once again.
“Coming to the joint I didn’t know they would be so deep,” he said. “It gives me that same feeling of being on overnight watch duty—when your stomach stays in knots and you’re always scanning the landscape.”
*Names have been changed for sources’ protection
Image (cropped) of Turney Center Industrial Complex via Tennessee Department of Correction