Stockard on the Stump: Private-prison operator to see inmate reduction after riot

Trousdale Turner Correctional Facility, which is managed by CoreCivic. (Photo: Tennessee Department of Corrections)

The Tennessee Department of Correction will be reducing the number of inmates at privately-run Trousdale Turner in the wake of a prison riot that injured a staffer and inmates, according to state officials.

Republican Sen. Mark Pody told the Lookout he spoke with Correction Department officials after the incident last weekend in Hartsville where 2,690 state inmates are held.

“They’ve indicated they’re going to be reducing the number of prisoners at that facility,” Pody said. “We can’t have this. … There was somebody stabbed up there, and we need to make sure if somebody is incarcerated they are still safe.”

Department of Correction spokesperson Dorinda Carter confirmed that in response to the event some Trousdale Turner inmates will be moved to state-run prisons as part of a new “operational structure” the department is working on to ensure safety for staff and inmates.

Pody said he understood a staff member sustained a stab wound in the riot. A CoreCivic spokesman confirmed an officer was treated and released for a minor injury in the incident. Three inmates were treated for minor injuries as well.

The riot took place a day before Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill into law forcing the state’s private-prison operator to lower inmate populations in facilities with high death rates. 

The law by Pody and Republican Rep. Clark Boyd of Lebanon, requires inmate numbers to be reduced by 10% if the death rate there is twice as high as the rate at comparable state-run prisons. 

Set to take effect Sunday, the law shows how Republicans who hold a supermajority in the legislature are starting to take a closer look at the private-prison operator. 

“This was another unfortunate event,” Pody said.

In light of the riot and a federal probe into Trousdale Turner, Pody wants to renew a prison oversight panel that was nixed more than a decade ago, giving lawmakers more control over CoreCivic and the state’s prisons. 

The riot also revives questions about operations at Trousdale Turner where the company has struggled to hire officers and keep them.

An inmate reduction also could affect the company’s bottom line in Tennessee where it makes about $240 million annually to run four prisons and drew a nearly $7 million bump for cost increases this year. 

Criticism continues

The prison remains on lockdown during an investigation of the riot in which officers used chemical agents to force inmates out of an inner yard they commandeered and make them return to cells.

The incident is giving critics of privately-run prisons more proof to back their complaints.

“The recent events at Trousdale Turner Correctional Facility are as horrific as they are unsurprising and preventable,” said Matthew Charles, state legislative affairs manager of the nonprofit FAMM, which advocates for incarcerated people and their families. “Violence and chaos have pervaded Trousdale Turner since its opening in 2016. The people who live and work there fear for their lives on a daily basis.”

The U.S. Department of Justice started a civil rights investigation into Trousdale Turner last year based on reports showing high death rates and sexual violence, partly as a result of understaffing and constant turnover. FAMM, which urged the federal probe, has been advocating for independent prison oversight in Tennessee, Charles said, adding violence continues at Trousdale Turner despite the investigation.

Andy Potter, executive director of One Voice United, another inmate advocacy group, said correctional officers and inmates are being put at risk.

“While the riot at Trousdale Turner was resolved without loss of life, this incident underscores the harsh reality of a correctional system pushed past its limits, suffering from chronic understaffing, insufficient training and a lack of oversight that has led to increasingly dangerous conditions,” Potter said in a statement.

CoreCivic said in a press release that Trousdale County Sheriff’s Department and Tennessee Highway Patrol helped its staff and the Tennessee Department of Correction quell the riot without serious injuries to inmates or officers.

The riot broke out Sunday when a group of inmates left their cells and gained access to an inner yard at the prison, destroying property, setting small fires and refusing to take orders from staff, according to CoreCivic.

U.S. Department of Justice opens investigation into CoreCivic Trousdale County prison

No inmates tried to escape the facility, and the staff’s response did not involve a hostage situation, according to CoreCivic, which said it is “committed to operating safe and secure facilities that provide comprehensive, compassionate care” for inmates and staff. 

Yet Democratic state Sen. Heidi Campbell said she hears frequently from people who are “terrified” for loved ones being held at CoreCivic prisons. It oversees 8,150 inmates, more than a third of those in 12 state prisons.

“The conditions at Trousdale Correction Facility have been horrific for a long time – nobody is safe there. Not the prisoners, not the guards, not the staff. CoreCivic has known about this, but they do nothing – because fixing isn’t profitable,” Campbell said in a statement.

Amid the chaos, CoreCivic is lining up to win federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts to detain immigrants, Campbell said.

While Democratic lawmakers have been warning about the consequences of using the private-prison operator for several years, mainly because of bad audits, Republican lawmakers are catching on.

Yet even as the state penalized the company $44.78 million since 2022 for contractual shortfalls on staffing, Correction Commissioner Frank Strada and Gov. Bill Lee show no signs of moving in a different direction. Lee, in fact, called CoreCivic an “important partner.”

Getting a boost?

Former Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn visited Nashville this week with U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon, touring a charter school and meeting with officials to build support for an appointment to a federal post.

“During my visit to @Nshprep in Tennessee, I witnessed firsthand how their year-round learning cultivates sharp critical thinkers,” McMahon said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Oddly enough, they didn’t invite the media, which normally is dragged along in hallways when Gov. Bill Lee visits local schools. It’s possible McMahon and Schwinn didn’t want to take questions from the press, which might have asked why the latter failed to report a new business, New Horizon BluePrint Group, on her federal conflict of interest disclosure, then dissolved it shortly before the U.S. Senate held her confirmation hearing for deputy secretary. 

Former Tennessee education leader promises feds she will cut conflicts

McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, started the company that morphed into World Wrestling Entertainment, apparently part of the criteria to earn a key post in the Trump Administration. (The president attended a rasslin’ event recently before sending troops to Los Angeles to quell protesters.)

Why anyone would want to take a position in the U.S. Education Department is puzzling, when half of America wants to get rid of it. Many of these experts say states should be in charge of education.

For the most part, they are, except for sections dealing with special education and the needs of low-income students. Tennessee sets its own curriculum for students, which could be the reason so many are struggling to read.

Targeting federal education

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti joined with a group called Students for Fair Admissions this week in filing an anti-discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education over its Hispanic-Serving Institution program, which provides federal funds for low-income students at colleges with at least 25% Hispanic students.

For instance, the University of Memphis is ineligible for the funds because it doesn’t have enough Hispanic students, even though 61% of its student population is made up of minorities, according to a release from Skrmetti’s office.

“A federal grant system that openly discriminates against students based on ethnicity isn’t just wrong and un-American – it’s unconstitutional,” Skrmetti said.

Tennessee’s attorney general is buoyed by the Supreme Court ruling that said Harvard University’s admission standards are racially discriminatory. He lumps this Hispanic program in with that one and adds, “Treating people differently because of their skin color and ancestry drags our country backwards.”

We can think of a lot of other things that push the nation back toward the 1800s. But there’s no need to replay the history of the 20th century.

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Culture warrior

Shortly before announcing he would step down from Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District seat, U.S. Rep. Mark Green introduced one of those acronym bills that would take mere mortals years to coin.

The Ashland City area Republican who represents a portion of Nashville announced late last week he is sponsoring the Focusing Academies on Leadership and Cultivating Officers for National Security Act. Also known as the FALCONS Act, the bill is designed to execute an executive order by President Trump by removing courses that teach “radical gender ideology” and critical race theory.

A West Point graduate, Green said banning the teaching of Marxist theories at the military academy such as critical race theory and gender ideology will make sure “the primary focus remains not just how to fight, but what to fight for – liberty, the Constitution, representative government and our national defense.”

Green added he’s glad West Point removed a course called “Race, Ethnicity and Nation,” and another called “Power and Difference,” along with two on gender ideology.

The former Republican state senator concluded his opus by saying, “That all men are created equal is the self-evident truth at the heart of our nation,” contrary to the concept of critical race theory, which he said defines people by “immutable physical characteristics” and seeks to change historical wrongs through discrimination.

If that means “redlining” neighborhoods to stop banks from lending money to Black residents never took place, then maybe the concept should be eliminated. Unfortunately, it happened, and colleges could do our future military officers a favor by letting them know about this injustice.

But Green’s motive for sponsoring this bill when he’s set to step down after a vote on the president’s budget is hard to figure. Maybe it’s one last rage against the machine.

Insurrection or protest?

In advance of scheduled protests around Friday’s court hearing for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man inadvertently deported, U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles is targeting groups that could be involved in the rally.

Ogles, who represents the heavily gerrymandered 5th Congressional District, said in an X post Wednesday that several non-government organizations named in a news article are “sponsoring an insurrection in Nashville this Friday” and asks a Republican data group to see if they receive government funds.

Garcia faces two criminal human smuggling charges connected to a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. He’s to be arraigned Friday at the federal courthouse in Nashville, and groups such as Service Employees International Union are to participate in a rally opposing his deportation and generally resisting Trump’s deportation policies.

To gain attention, Ogles might be trying to compare the groups with those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and caused the deaths of multiple police officers while Trump and his entourage watched from a bunker. 

The main difference is the Nashville crowd will be raising a ruckus over immigration enforcement instead of trying to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power. 

Ogles is under fire for embellishing his resume and misleading the public with his Federal Election Commission reports, although Trump derailed that investigation. 

But this conflation of insurrection versus protestation could be bad for what we once called a nation.

The ultimate question is whether the president would pardon Nashville protesters as he did the Jan. 6 rioters.

“What a field day for the heat / a thousand people in the street.”*

*“For What It’s Worth”, Buffalo Springfield