Giving families a voice: Lawmakers push family advisory board for prison Tennessee inmates

Tennessee lawmakers are moving to create a family advisory board to hear prison safety complaints amid concerns about extortion and inmate deaths.

Republican Sen. Tom Hatcher of Maryville said Tuesday 35 inmates have died in state prisons since January as he introduced Senate Bill 2531, a measure designed to give inmates’ family members a stronger voice in prison safety, communication and policies for re-entering society. The measure received a 9-0 vote in the Senate State and Local Government Committee.

“It restores trust in basic safety for incarcerated people and their families, fixes the communication crisis so families can get timely and accurate information,” Hatcher said. “It structures the family advisory board to be independent, representative and accountable to the General Assembly and to the public.”

Hatcher, who chairs a Senate correction committee, said the state’s prisons have “alarmingly high death rates” that cause fear among inmates’ family members. 

CoreCivic inmate sues Trousdale Turner prison staff over alleged extortion

The Department of Correction did not immediately confirm the figure of 35 deaths.

Families also report “widespread gang violence” as well as “staff-enabled extortion” and open drug use that endangers inmates and prison guards, he said. 

The governor and House and Senate speakers would appoint three people each to a nine-person board, including family members of prisoners, which would open talks with the Department of Correction to advocate for inmates.

Initially, the bill included hiring an employee to run the board, but that was removed to avoid budgeting problems. Board members would serve voluntarily.

Republican Rep. Clark Boyd, who is carrying the House version of the bill, HB2111, said Tuesday he learned about problems within Tennessee’s prisons from Lebanon resident Tim Leeper, whose son died of a drug overdose while serving time in Trousdale Turner Correction Center, a prison run by state contractor CoreCivic.

“It’s interesting they decided it should not be housed under the (Tennessee Department of Correction) lest it be a pointless board, because if you put it under the TDOC, they’re just going to kill it, and they’re not going to let it grow legs,” Leeper said.

Putting the board under the legislature gives it a better chance for “accountability through transparency,” Leeper said. 

The board likely would set up a website where family members could make requests, share grievances and let people know how to file complaints, Leeper said. If problems aren’t taken up by the state, the board would step in and look at them when it meets quarterly in different parts of the state, he added.

Republican Sen. Ed Jackson of Jackson, who has worked on correction committees for more than a decade, said Tuesday he receives “numerous phone calls” from family members of inmates who are held in the state’s prisons and privately-run facilities.

Family members and loved ones are being extorted for thousands of dollars, forced to put money into accounts to keep inmates from being harmed or even killed while in prison, he said.

“It’s horrible what’s going on there,” Jackson said.

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

A Trousdale Turner inmate sued the warden and staff in 2025, alleging they allowed gang members to assault him and extort money from his mother.

Filed in May in U.S. District Court in Nashville, the lawsuit claims gang members at Trousdale Turner threatened to assault inmate Charles Anderson if his mother and two family friends didn’t send them money. They beat and sexually assaulted him anyway after he complained to prison staff, according to the filing.

Trousdale Turner already faces a federal civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for gang violence and murders. Correction Commissioner Frank Strada told the Lookout recently he understands the investigation remains open.

After what was described as a riot at the prison last summer, the Department of Correction removed some of the most violent inmates from Trousdale Turner and left only inmates older than 50. Staff and policies were revamped as well, officials said.

Senators are pushing for a body camera pilot program  for officers at Trousdale Turner. But Strada has opposed body cams, mainly citing problems with inmate privacy and opting instead for a central monitoring facility.

Trousdale Turner has had the highest number of deaths in a state prison for men the past few years, with 98 confirmed by death certificates from 2019 through 2022, including 30 overdoses, according to state figures. Whiteville Correctional Facility in Hardeman County had 53 deaths, 21 of those by overdose, in those four years. South Central Correctional Facility, also run by CoreCivic, reported 46 deaths, nine of them by overdose in that time frame.

In comparison, Morgan County Correctional, a state-run facility, had 41 deaths, including 11 overdoses. Northwest Correctional Facility reported 44 deaths with 19 overdoses in those four years.