On the evening of July 24, South Central Correctional Facility, a medium-security private prison in Tennessee, gave notice that 128 people—half of one of the living units—would be relocated in the morning. Due to ongoing rewiring work, Gemini Unit “B” pod would move down the hill to Discovery Unit, which had one pod sitting vacant. Discovery’s other pod is occupied, generally by gang-affiliated prisoners South Central considers actively violent. A single gate separates the pods.
Gemini B is where where South Central has mainly collected prisoners with steady jobs and no gang affiliations or recent violence. It houses most of the facility’s queer community, as well as the senior citizens.
Around 6:30 pm on July 26, a Friday, security that had overseen the move left for the weekend and a new officer began his shift alone. Gemini B prisoners reached by Filter reported that the officer was at the gate between the two pods when someone from the other side held a shank to his neck and told him to leave it open; he did. About two dozen people entered, all bearing shanks or similar weapons, “saying don’t be scared, they’d come to collect protection fees.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, corrections officers across the country quit en masse and in many facilities gangs assumed control in their stead. Organized extortion of unaffiliated prisoners is common, since they usually have no backup. Remarkably, no one was hurt in this instance.
Two dozen or so of the Gemini B prisoners too old to fight—many are in wheelchairs—were quickly ushered into bottom-floor cells and the doors locked behind them. The other 100 or so closed ranks along the second-floor rail and blocked the stairs. For over two hours before the standoff attracted security, a group of generally quiet-living senior citizens, some armed with canes, stood together and beat back attempts by the other group to come up the stairs.
“For many years, [we] were always under threat: ‘If you act up, we’ll send you to the bottom of the hill.'”
“It was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever experienced in prison,” said one person who’s been incarcerated 30 years. “Like two cavalries coming together and waiting to see who’s going to fire first. [But] we had anticipated them coming and decided we’d handle it together.”
South Central is one of four prisons in the state that the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) does not operate itself, but instead outsources to for-profit operator CoreCivic.
Eleven prisoners reached by Filter, who have collectively served 195 years, characterized the incident as unprecedented. All spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern over retaliation from administration, specifically the prospect of being transferred to a different CoreCivic facility.
CoreCivic, South Central Warden Grady Perry and TDOC Commissioner Frank Strada did not respond to Filter’s inquiries about the decision to move Gemini B or the security risks created as a result.
“For many years, the offenders at the top of the hill were always under threat: ’If you act up, we’ll send you to the bottom of the hill,’” one Gemini B resident who’s been incarcerated for 12 years told Filter. “The bottom of the hill is the place you don’t want to go and everyone knows it. We were shocked to find out the one pod with the diabetics, the LGBTs, the workers with high income—some guys make two, three hundred bucks a month—was going down to where they’re preying on people for a bar of soap.”
Several people from Gemini B described having overheard staff remark that the pod “needed a wake-up call.”
Several people from Gemini B described having overheard staff remark that the pod was “entitled” and “needed a wake-up call.”
“They’ll let things slip when they get angry. ‘They should fend for themselves for a while,'” said one member of the LGBTQ community, who’s been incarcerated 15 years. “There are lots of people who feel that administration is targeting us … like we think we’re better than others. All we’re doing is, we’re the ones staying out of trouble.”
Within a day or two of the breach, both assistant wardens as well as the new unit manager had visited. Multiple prisoners remarked to Filter that it was the first time they’d ever seen senior staff on a weekend. But no one provided information or took questions; they simply completed their walk-throughs and left.
Since the incident there have been two to three officers posted at Discovery rather than one. In a development that surprised some, the officer who’d opened the gate returned to work at the end of the weekend; this time with backup.
“This level of security has never happened before,” one man incarcerated 17 years told Filter. “But the anxiety and the worry—we need communication. Let us know how long we’ll be in this situation. We don’t know what to expect. We don’t know who’s making these decisions. There’s different rumors going around. Some say 30 days, some say six months, some say permanent. The whole situation’s a mess.”
There’s a general consensus that even just two officers per shift—one on each side of the pod, which used to be the norm—would be enough, if the officers had been on the job at least a year or two and were reasonably competent. Since early in the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s become common for officers to be assigned to cover an entire unit alone.
Almost all of South Central except the Discovery Unit is at the top of the hill.
“The biggest issue is the turnover,” remarked one of the Gemini B prisoners. “Officers here now might not be here next month; they complain about administration more than the inmates. A handful here are really, really good, but it’s hard to run the place in accordance with rules and regulations when it’s always short of staff and no one has backup. It’s breaking down from both sides.”
One man who’s been incarcerated over 40 years noted that forcing people into positions where they have to fight to defend themselves can serve as a pretext for keeping the pod on lockdown, as prisons grow overcrowded and understaffed. Beyond that, it can mar the records of prisoners working down their sentences with “good behavior,” or even cause appeals to be dismissed while prisoners representing themselves go without access to the law library.
“It’s almost like they want the pod to fail.”
Beyond the immediate security concerns, Discovery poses several problems that make it less suitable for anyone, but particularly disabled prisoners or those at higher risk of sexual assault.
South Central cell doors are electronic, and the wiring work they’d been told was completed in Discovery and now commencing in Gemini Unit involved installing a new button people could push to lock and unlock cells from the inside. None of them work. Everyone’s cell doors are open, because closing one means having to find an officer to open it again.
They’ll have to climb the hill to be dispensed any daily medications; twice a day if they get insulin shots.
Part of what made Gemini more suitable for South Central’s older and disabled prisoners was that it’s located at the top the hill. Almost everything on the compound is, except Discovery. Now, getting to the chow hall, medical wing, laundry machines and law library means walking up a hill about the length of a football field, then back down.
Farthest away is the mailroom; regular mail is delivered to people in their cells, but the only way to receive legal mail is to sign for it up at the mailroom. It’s the same with sending out packages.
The Gemini B prisoners are working out plans for getting enough food to those who realistically won’t be making the walk to chow. But they’ll have to climb the hill to be dispensed any daily medications; twice a day if they get insulin shots.
Prisoners who use wheelchairs have “pushers”—other prisoners who are paid a few cents per hour to help them get around. But that still leaves those who use walkers, or have diminished lung capacity from decades of smoking—which can be particularly harmful in prisons—or have heart conditions or painful arthritis. Even with the buddy system the pod has newly established as a safety precaution, there are concerns about fainting or falling.
As a unit, Discovery is the farthest away from backup. One man described watching an officer hit the “man down” button the day of the move, believing one of the prisoners from the other pod was trying to break in. It turned out the officer had misidentified someone from Gemini B trying to get to his own cell, but it still took backup nearly four and a half minutes to arrive.
“I would like not to be in that predicament, nobody wanted it. It’s very uncomfortable,” someone else from Gemini B, incarcerated 25 years, told Filter. “People like myself who’ve made great strides to do something better with their life, when they put [us] in a position where we have to defend ourselves, they become complicit. They become responsible for whatever happens.”
Correction, July 29: A previous version of this article stated the events described took place in June
Photograph via Iowa Department of Corrections
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