Pointing to “reports of staffing shortages, physical and sexual assaults, murders and a 188% turnover rate among prison guards just last year,” the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on August 20, 2024, that it was launching a civil rights investigation into Tennessee’s troubled Trousdale Turner Correctional Center (TTCC), which is operated for the state Department of Corrections (DOC) under contract by private prison profiteer CoreCivic, Inc.

“Publicly available information suggests that Trousdale Turner has been plagued by serious problems since it first opened its doors” in 2016, declared U.S. Attorney Henry C. Leventis—something PLN reported. [See: PLN, Feb. 2018, p.46.] DOC temporarily suspended prisoner transfers shortly after the opening, forcing CoreCivic to import employees from other prisons and hire another private firm, G4S, to provide rent-a-guards.

Prisoners held at the lockup today confirmed to PLN that it is largely run by gangs and rife with violence, resulting in frequent lockdowns. Yet the state showed no signs it was ready to part ways with the firm, even after wrapping up a five-year $276 million contract in August 2024. The facility, which is owned by a Trousdale County agency that contracts separately with CoreCivic, houses the prisoners.

The DOJ’s investigation, conducted under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997, et seq., will “determine if there are systemic constitutional violations regarding the treatment of people in this privately-run correctional facility,” the agency said.

TTCC has already been cited in multiple State Comptroller audits—most recently in December 2023—for security deficiencies, gang activity, mishandling sexual abuse claims, high staff turnover and contractual noncompliance, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Aug. 2024, p.17.] A 2019 report jointly issued by the Human Rights Defense Center, PLN’s nonprofit publisher, and No Exceptions Prison Collective found that CoreCivic facilities had twice as many homicides as other DOC prisons, including multiple murders at TTCC.

Death of Marktavious Twilley

One of those murdered was Marktavious Twilley, who was killed by fellow prisoners in a “large fight” on March 28, 2022. A wrongful death suit filed by his mother, Lakenya McGhee-Twilley, claimed that “the fight occurred and was allowed to continue without staff intervention because TTCC was ‘severely understaffed’ despite contractual staffing obligations.” On March 27, 2024, the federal court for the Middle District of Tennessee denied a request by Plaintiff to add a CoreCivic guard and case manager as defendants, saying that McGhee-Twilley should have investigated sooner to identify them before the statute of limitations ran out on her claim. See: McGhee-Twilley v. CoreCivic of Tenn., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55017 (M.D. Tenn.).

After that, the parties jointly stipulated to dismissal and announced that they had reached a settlement on July 1, 2024. But when the case was dismissed, Plaintiff objected that she still had other claims and filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which remains pending. McGhee-Twilley is represented by attorneys Daniel A. Horwitz, Lindsay E. Smith and Melissa Kathleen Dix of Horwitz Law, PLLC in Nashville. See: McGhee-Twilley v. CoreCivic of Tenn., USCA (6th Cir.), Case No. 24-5707.

TTCC’s problems were also summarized in a federal suit filed pro se by prisoner Christopher Adams. Screening the case on January 23, 2024, the district court noted that the 50-page complaint alleged “in painstaking detail the dangerousness of the living conditions at TTCC due to rampant violence between inmates.” Adams also said that within the first 219 days of 2023, TTCC was on lockdown over half the time.

“Fights between inmates in the pods are allowed to carry on without a response from the guards,” Adams’s complaint declared, and guards “routinely let inmates into pods where they do not reside.” Those glaring lapses “demonstrate that CoreCivic and its employees adopt and enforce a corporate policy of understaffing to maximize profits,” which results in “assaults, deaths, murders, rapes, and extortion.” See: Adams v. CoreCivic of Tenn., LLC, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11700 (M.D. Tenn.).

Adams voluntarily dismissed his case on March 1, 2024, perhaps after reaching an undocketed settlement; as a private firm, CoreCivic is not compelled to comply with public records requests by Tennessee courts.

“Not Above the Law”

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke said that “private prisons are not above the law,” noting at the time of DOJ’s announcement that there were 196 assaults, 90 incidents of sexual misconduct, two homicides and 15 deaths classified as “accidental” at TTCC between July 2022 and June 2023.

Despite these ongoing and well-known problems, DOC Commissioner Frank Strada has given the company a vote of confidence, asking state lawmakers in November 2024 for a 3% increase for CoreCivic. That would lift the firm’s annual payout another $6.8 million to a total of $244.5 million, representing 15% of DOC’s budget. The private prison contractor, which was co-founded by a former chairman of Tennessee’s Republican Party, houses over a third of the state’s prison population in TTCC and three other lockups.

Gov. Bill Lee (R) also voiced support for the company, calling it a “very important partner.” The firm maintains strong political connections in the Volunteer State through campaign contributions and lobbyists. Since 2009 it has given $138,000 to the Republican Party and $47,500 to the state Democratic Caucus. Lee received at least $85,300 in donations from the company between 2018 and 2022.

Politics may also determine how aggressively DOJ moves with its investigation, now that the agency is under new U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was appointed by incoming President Donald J. Trump (R) and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in February 2025.

Horwitz, the attorney who represented McGhee-Twilley as well as families of several other prisoners who died at TTCC, lauded the DOJ investigation into what he called “chronic civil rights violations” that DOC officials “knowingly permit[ed].”

“The heinous abuses that occur with regularity at the chronically understaffed facility are unhidden,” he said, “and they have been documented year after year in the dozens of wrongful death and other lawsuits that our firm and others have filed against CoreCivic and its employees over, and over, and over again as CoreCivic allowed the prisoners in its care to be murdered, raped and stabbed without intervention.”

Added Horwitz: “It is long past time for this death factory to be shut down.”  

Additional sources: Chattanooga Free Press, Tennessee Lookout

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