by Matt Clarke

Brentwood, Tennessee-based CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) operates the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center (TTCC), the state’s largest prison, and three other Tennessee prisons for the state Department of Corrections (DOC). But despite the company’s large footprint in Tennessee, its legacy is dismal at best as former prison guards and prisoners paint a picture of prisons severely understaffed, awash in drugs, virtually run by gangs, and overwhelmed by beatings, stabbings and rapes. Local prosecutors have complained of having insufficient staff to prosecute all the felony cases that they get from TTCC—which amount to more than 204 since 2021, including 26 prosecutions of CoreCivic employees.

Poor Performance

On August 20, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it was opening an investigation into TTCC, which is located northeast of Nashville, due to alleged violations of the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1997-1997j. The DOJ pointed specifically to “reports of staff shortages, physical and sexual assaults, murders, and a 188% turnover rate among prison guards just last year.”

Former U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Henry C. Leventis, who helmed the office at the time and announced the investigation, added that “[p]ublicly available information suggests that Trousdale Turner has been plagued by serious problems since [2016, when] it first opened its doors.” Among the strongest pieces of evidence: the death rate at DOC-operated facilities in fiscal year 2022-23 was 647 per 100,000 prisoners, but the rate was 949 at CoreCivic prisons—almost 47% higher.

Less than a year later, state lawmakers passed SB 1115, which Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed into law in May 2025. It mandates an automatic 10% reduction in the number of prisoners held for the DOC in any private lockup where the mortality rate exceeds the rate in state-run prisons. Given that CoreCivic operates on a per diem model, this would translate into a 10% reduction in revenue. But the threat was made largely toothless by a condition that was added to the final bill—that the penalty will not be triggered until the private prison’s mortality rate rises to at least double the rate in DOC-operated prisons. [See: PLN, Aug. 2025, p.55.]

Lucrative Contracts

CoreCivic’s five-year over-$230 million contract to house more than a third of the DOC’s prisoners expired the same month that the DOJ investigation was launched. It had also been a mere eight months since the latest of several State Comptroller audit reports cited TTCC for security deficiencies, gang activity, mishandling claims of sexual abuse, high staff turnover, contractual noncompliance and a murder rate double that found in state-run prisons.

The unfavorable audit reports and pending investigation did not slow down the renewal of the contract for even more money, a $6.8 million bump in 2024 and a $13 million increase in 2025, making payments to CoreCivic more than 15% of the DOC’s requested $1.66 billion annual budget for 2026. [See: PLN, Dec. 2025, p.14.]

Minor Fines for Major
Contract Violations

CoreCivic has been fined around $15 million a year for contract violations, including leaving staff positions vacant for years, improperly putting prisoners in solitary confinement, failing to take prisoners to medical appointments, and losing track of ammunition. “Chronic understaffing has led to significant security failures, including prisoner assaults, overdoses, and families forced to pay extortion payments in hopes of keeping their loved ones safe from gangs,” The Tennessean reported. “Former inmates, guards and families have brought lawsuits, testified in legislative hearings, and spoken publicly about how short staffing at Trousdale has led to prisoner injuries and deaths.”

Given these conditions, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, in June 2025, prisoners at Trousdale rioted, holding several guards hostage and injuring three of them.

Follow the Money

Why would CoreCivic risk riots, rampant gangs, overdoses, and injuries to prisoners and staff as well as millions in penalties? Just follow the money.

As listed on CoreCivic’s website, the starting salary for a guard at TTCC is $24.62 an hour, or around $51,000 per year (this amount is a few thousand dollars above the national average for CoreCivic guards, according to ZipRecruiter). Therefore, for every 17 vacant guard positions, it potentially saves close to $900,000 annually. An auditors’ site visit at TTCC in 2023 showed that the prison failed to staff 57% of its posts, including 20% designated “critical.” If you can imagine CoreCivic running all four of its Tennessee prisons on half-staff and saving roughly $50,000 a year for each vacant position, it is easy to see why this breach of contract persists as the tens of millions saved dwarf the $15 million annual penalty. The actual average staff vacancy rate at the four CoreCivic prisons was 42% in 2023, not far short of half.

The June 2025 riot at TTCC seems to have jolted CoreCivic out of complacency, at least to some degree. It claims to have reduced understaffing at Trousdale from 33.7% to just 5% over the course of 2025. Whether this vacancy rate can be maintained, or if it is even real, has yet to be determined.

How Did This Mess Get Started?

To understand how CoreCivic became politically bulletproof in Tennessee, one must examine its history and the history of private prisons in the United States.

After the Civil War, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude—but it included an “except clause” that allowed forced labor to be levied as punishment for a crime. This laid the legal foundation for prisoners to be used to generate private profits during the 19th century. In turn, the practice of convict leasing to farms and factories became widespread, especially in the South.

After the end of Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal troops, selective enforcement of dubious anti-vagrancy laws against Black men essentially allowed for the perpetuation of chattel slavery. In several states of the former Confederacy, these prisoners were held in lockups constructed on former plantations, where those not leased to nearby agricultural operations were sent every day to raise crops for the prisons’ kitchens. For the next six decades, generations of Black men were sent to labor without pay in the same fields where their ancestors had toiled as slaves before the war.

Alabama became the last state to ban its formal convict leasing program in 1928, but the convict slave labor system continued on prison property as many prisoners were still forced to labor in prison agricultural fields and prison industries. The concept returned with a twist in the 1970s and early 1980s, as the “war on drugs” and “tough on crime” policies of GOP Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Regan caused mass incarceration to skyrocket. That’s when former Tennessee Republican Party chair Tom Beasley teamed up with Nashville real estate executive Robert Crants and businessman T. Don Hutto. Starting in the 1960s, Hutto had been a warden of a Texas prison on a cotton plantation site that, as reported in Time magazine, primarily relied on Black prisoners for slave labor. The three men formed Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) in 1983, giving Tennessee the dubious honor of being the birthplace of the for-profit prison industry.

The previous year, a federal judge had declared Tennessee’s prisons “unfit for human habitation,” noting that they were overcrowded, racked with violence and lacked access to medical care. As the Nashville Banner reported, CCA’s founders took advantage of the crisis to turn a profit. In a contemporary article in The Journal of the Southern Regional Council, Beasley was quoted saying candidly that the goal of CCA was to “solve the prison problem and make a lot of money at the same time.” 

In 2016, the company’s name was changed to CoreCivic, and the motto changed to “Better the public good” in an attempt to whitewash numerous scandals and lawsuits brought against CCA over poor and often dangerous prison conditions.

From its inception, CCA had strong ties to some of Middle Tennessee’s most powerful businesses, government leaders and politicians. Jack Massey, a venture capitalist who co-founded Hospital Corporation of America and briefly owned Kentucky Fried Chicken, made the initial investment. Soon, Vanderbilt University was investing in CCA.

Steve Norris was commissioner of the Tennessee DOC between 1985 and 1988. In 1985, CCA approached the state with a proposal to fully take over the prison system for $250 million. Then-Governor Lamar Alexander (R) supported the idea but the legislature rejected it.

Norris was skeptical and unable to fathom how you could even value the DOC’s real estate and other assets, much less determine what would happen to its employees. Although its bid to take over the DOC failed during a special session of the legislature, CCA succeeded in getting another piece of legislation enacted, a statute providing that the state could only contract with a single private prison. This provision would prove essential in CCA’s rise to becoming “too big to fire” in Tennessee.

CCA signed its first contract with the DOC in 1992. Thus, the South-Central Correctional Facility in Clifton became Tennessee’s first private prison—and the first modern operation in the nation. Previously, in 1984, CCA began operating a county jail and detention center; that same year, it also converted a hotel in Houston into a privately owned immigrant detention center. South-Central, however, was the first full-scale prison that CCA operated. The facility is still being run by CoreCivic, currently under a three-year, $168 million contract signed in May 2025.

Over time, CCA found ways to circumvent the provision that only a single private prison could be contracted by signing contracts with local governments to operate prisons that would be owned by them and leased to the state. Thus, CoreCivic now operates but does not own TTCC in Hartsville, and Hardeman County Correction Center and Whiteville Correctional Facility, both in Whiteville. CCA sold the placement of its facilities to small rural town officials, touting them as a provider of guaranteed jobs.

From its humble beginnings in rural Tennessee, CCA spread out to operate prisons and jails in 21 states and even internationally. For the full year of 2025, it had a total revenue of $2.2 billion that yielded $116.5 million in net income. Much of that revenue came from federal government contracts, most of them to house federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees.

While CoreCivic/CCA was the first to roll out the private prison model, it now shares the total market with its leading competitor GEO Group, which was founded in 1987 and has become the largest for-profit prison operator in the country. Both companies have benefitted immensely from a surge in demand for caging people brought on by President Donald Trump’s (R) crackdown on migrants, who are held by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in detention facilities that are 100% leased from private operators like CoreCivic.

Profits for Politicians

CoreCivic has never been bashful about spending its earnings to favorably influence politicians. After all, its contracts depend on politicians’ approval. So the company is quick to make large political contributions, hoping to curry favor with its potential paymasters.

Recalling that CoreCivic’s cofounder was the former chair of the Tennessee Republican Party, it is hardly surprising to learn that the party received $138,000 in donations from the company since 2009. Hedging its bet, the company also gave the state Democratic Caucus $85,000 during the same time period.

That is just the tip of the political contributions iceberg as the company donated at least $85,000 to current Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) between 2018 and 2022. He is, unsurprisingly, an ardent supporter of CoreCivic despite the company’s many failings. Large contributions were also made to Lt. Governor Randy McNally (R) and state House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R); Democratic state Rep. Johnny Shaw, who has two CoreCivic prisons in his district, received over $13,000 from the company; and State Senator Jeff Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat, received $1,000 from CoreCivic in 2024, according to nonpartisan database OpenSecrets. The company also contributed $6,750 to the campaigns of state Senator Mark Pody (R-Lebanon) since 2011. 

According to Tennessee Lookout’s campaign spending database, CoreCivic is one of the largest political spenders in the state. Between 2010 and 2024, it spent over $2.7 million to lobby lawmakers and made another $1 million in campaign contributions. 

CoreCivic’s business and political ambitions are, of course, not limited to Tennessee. It spent $120,000 in 2025 lobbying for President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which included significant funding for ICE, the company’s primary federal contractor. It also gave $300,000 to political action committees affiliated with President Trump during the run up to the 2024 election and donated another $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural committees, according to Open Secrets. So far, in return, CoreCivic has received $680 million in ICE contracts since Trump’s 2025 inauguration. The contrast to the administration of former President Joe Biden (D) is stark, as Biden had made good on a campaign pledge with an executive order that ended federal contracting with private prison profiteers—and which, for the rest of his term, sent the stock of firms like CoreCivic into freefall.

CoreCivic also whitewashes its tarnished reputation by sponsoring “charitable” events for the affluent. On October 2, 2025, it hosted its 34th annual Golf Classic at the Hermitage Golf Course outside Nashville, raising $1 million for 72 nonprofits that support “justice-involved initiatives.” Beneficiaries included Dismas House, Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee, and local affiliates of Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children (CASA). Notably, not one of the nonprofits directly benefits prisoners.

The company also tries to improve its image by routinely sponsoring community events across central Tennessee, including events hosted by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and the United Way of Greater Nashville. Oddly, it sponsors the marching band at Raven High School, which is located in Brentwood, the same city where CoreCivic is headquartered. But two educators employed by the Cheekwood Estate and Gardens in Nashville resigned in 2025 over its acceptance of CoreCivic donations and the close ties maintained between the firm and some of the nonprofit’s board members.

Federal Failures

It is perhaps fitting that CCA cofounder T. Don Hutto’s name is affixed to a CoreCivic detention center in Taylor, Texas that has been notable for its inhumane conditions, both when it was used to house state prisoners and now that it is holding immigration detainees for ICE.

The company runs at least 15 ICE detention centers, including the recently reopened 1,033-bed Midwest Regional Reception Center, a192,000 square-foot maximum security prison in Kansas once used by the U.S. Marshals Service. It is now under contract with ICE for $60 million. The reopening followed a hard-fought zoning battle that ended when the Leavenworth city council voted 4-1 to issue a special use zoning permit.

Another of CoreCivic’s facilities in Texas, the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, costs taxpayers at least $13.1 million. The facility, which has a capacity of 2,400 people and is the only operating ICE detention center for families, has frequently been criticized for not providing adequate medical care. For example, interviews with families and an immigration lawyer by the New York Times revealed that, when several children came down with stomach ailments, medical staff at Dilley refused to treat them until they had vomited eight times. 

The abuses are happening nationwide. In November 2025, detainees sued ICE alleging that the CoreCivic facility near Bakersfield, California where they were being held is “riddled with insect infestations and sewage problems,” and that they were “denied access to water, food, and attorneys” as well as adequate medical care. Other lawsuits have alleged similar constitutional violations at CoreCivic facilities used by ICE in Arizona, New Jersey, New Mexico, and elsewhere.

In recent years, there have been a number of deaths at facilities CoreCivic runs for ICE. When surviving family members contact CoreCivic, the company is anything but transparent about the cause of, and circumstances leading up to, the detainee’s death. Lawsuits filed by survivors allege medical neglect, records falsified to cover up unsafe conditions, civil rights violations, and failure to protect detainees from physical and sexual abuse and other harms.

CoreCivic also houses ICE detainees in Tennessee. Many of those arrested in the recent enhanced ICE enforcement action begun in Memphis in early 2026 found themselves detained at the recently-reopened CoreCivic facility in Mason. The West Tennessee prison had been closed, but CoreCivic renewed its contract with local officials in August 2025 in anticipation that Trump immigration policies would spur greater demand for ICE detention space.

Other States and Local Governments Use CoreCivic

Although CoreCivic got its start incarcerating Tennessee prisoners, it has expanded to many other state prison systems and also runs jails for local governments. The Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Re-entry houses close to 3,000 of its prisoners at CoreCivic’s La Palma Correctional Center and another 2,000 at the company’s Red Rock Correctional Facility. At least six prisoners died at those facilities in 2025.

The Colorado DOC contracts with CoreCivic for more than 3,000 beds at the Brent County Correctional Facility in Las Animas and the Crowley County Correctional Facility in Olney Springs. The company also runs “community treatment centers” for the Colorado counties of Adams, Arapaho and Boulder.

The Vermont DOC sends 250 of its prisoners to a CoreCivic facility in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. Harris County, Texas, home to Houston, and Hinds County, Mississippi, where Jackson is located, also sends hundreds of prisoners and detainees to the CoreCivic lockup in Tallahatchie. The New Mexico Corrections Department is renting the 596-bed Northwest New Mexico Corrections Center from CoreCivic. 

In 2019, California passed AB32, legislation banning private prisons. But a federal district court voided its application to the U.S. Marshals Service, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit then exempted the entire federal government, reasoning that the law violated the Supremacy Clause of the federal constitution. [See: PLN, Apr. 2023, p.46.] CoreCivic had never left the state, though; taking advantage of a loophole in the law, it had already signed a $70 million contract to provide the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation with “re-entry services.”

TTCC Shows How Not to Run
a Private Prison

Tennessee’s largest and most infamous prison provides a lesson in what not to do when operating a private prison, or any prison for that matter. Chronic understaffing is the root of all evil when it comes to prisons. Understaffing puts more work on remaining staff. They get burned out and quit, which leads to worse understaffing in a vicious cycle that invariably leads to guards ceding virtual control of the prison to the strongest groups of prisoners—the gangs.

Gangs are primarily interested in making money by smuggling in drugs at first, but they almost always become drunk from the heady elixir of the power that they can exert over other prisoners. Violence ensues.

The initial violence is aimed at drug debtors but, once the gangs get away with that for a while, anyone can become their victim as the motivation shifts from collecting debt to extortion, robbery and sexual assault. As drugs flood the prison, fatal and nonfatal overdoses spike. With conditions worsening, deaths by suicide become more common as desperate, depressed men seek the only guaranteed way out of the chaos.

Meanwhile, when there are insufficient guards to keep control of a prison, there certainly aren’t enough to provide security for rehabilitation, educational, vocational, or recreational programs. Even medical appointments inside the prison become difficult to manage. Those appointments outside the prison become impossible due to lack of guards for transportation.

After the Nashville Banner published an article about TTCC in April 2025, it received many testimonials from current and former TTCC prisoners and their families which described the prison as fitting this typical pattern for chronically severely understaffed prisons to a tee. That article reported on families of prisoners who died while incarcerated at TTCC.

The Nashville Scene had a similar glut of negative reports on TTCC. Diana Riner told the publication that her son, Elijah Crosswhite, was “unrecognizable” after being held in isolation for two years at TTCC, developing mental health complications but receiving little to nothing by way of evaluations or treatment. After his release in 2024, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Riner now advocates for improving conditions at TTCC and ending CoreCivic’s contracts with the DOC. “We’re not asking for fluffy pillows and blankets,” said Riner. “We’re talking about basic human rights here—food, water, safety, not being raped, not being beat up, not being threatened.”

Tim Leeper’s 25-year-old son Kylan had a fatal overdose at TTCC in 2023. Since Kylan’s death, Tim has quit his roofing job to advocate for prison reform full-time. He founded the nonprofit Kylan’s Light to help with the advocacy. He also filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against CoreCivic and TTCC officials, which survived a motion to dismiss the company employees serving as Warden and Assistant Warden in August 2025. See: Est. of Leeper v. CoreCivic, Inc., 797 F.Supp.3d 797 (M.D. Tenn. 2025).

Kylan’s story is especially sad. He repeatedly told his family that he was being housed with a fentanyl dealer and was afraid that he would be accidentally exposed to an overdose or that his cellmate might intentionally put an overdose in his food or drink. He took his concerns to the prison administration. They offered to move him into a cell with a gang member. He declined and, soon thereafter, suffered a fatal overdose.

Around the time of Kylan’s death, TTCC was experiencing up to 20 overdoses a day. This led to guards asking permission to carry overdose-reversing medication on their persons while doing rounds.

Leeper’s lawsuit details how Kylan unsuccessfully sought help. It also alleges that TTCC Assistant Warden Porter was the head of a well-organized drug smuggling operation and that TTCC Warden Vantell knew about the drug smuggling operation and failed to do anything about it, thus giving TTCC prisoners “unfettered access” to drugs. In ruling that many of Leeper’s claims could go forward, the court held that he had stated plausible claims against Porter and Vantell.

The allegations of a widespread smuggling operation at TTCC are also backed up by the fact that, according to the Nashville Banner, nearly two dozen TTCC employees were arrested for drug smuggling in 2023 and 2024.

A federal indictment unsealed in 2025 shows that a similar situation exists at South-Central. The federal investigation started with a contraband cellphone seized from an alleged member of the Bloods who was 14 years into a 22-year sentence. Text messages on the cell phone showed how the prisoner used it to coordinate a drug smuggling operation involving his girlfriend and three guards, paying them $4,000 plus a “bonus” for each drop. The guards, one of them a captain, have been fired. At least one is cooperating with the FBI.

Family members of prisoners told the Nashville Banner about rapes, knifepoint robberies, beatings and extortion at TTCC and South-Central. One man said that his son was stabbed and beaten inside TTCC. A woman said her son had been regularly robbed and she had been extorted for over $5,000 by prisoners at the CoreCivic prison in Hardeman County.

“I cannot afford to continue to pay the money they are demanding and the prison looks the other way,” she wrote. “There are so many moms like me! We are all just praying with all our hearts that our sons make it out alive.

CoreCivic and the DOC Punt

What is CoreCivic’s response to all this scandal? The company recently changed wardens at TTCC—for the fourth time in 13 months. Wardens come and go, but the problems remain.

How about the DOC? Four months after the deadly riot at TTCC, Commissioner Frank Strada told state lawmakers that CoreCivic wasn’t to blame—and then threw its guards under the bus. “The incident that occurred there was just due to staff error,” Strada said, in a statement reported by the Tennessee Lookout. “It wasn’t because of CoreCivic. It wasn’t a CoreCivic problem. It was just that the staff that were working there didn’t do what they were supposed to do.” By segregating CoreCivic from its own employees, Strada conveniently absolved management of any liability that might endanger the company’s contracts.

The Commissioner is also focused on getting the legislature to appropriate $1.7 million for “drone detection technology” in order to intercept contraband, claiming that drones are the most significant source—despite the many DOC and Core­Civic employees arrested for smuggling drugs. Strada is also pushing for an artificial intelligence center that would monitor 6,500 cameras in state prisons. This would, he told lawmakers, “enhance our ability to identify patterns” and “disrupt contraband networks.”

One pattern is abundantly clear without needing to invest millions of dollars into AI surveillance: the decades-long presence of CoreCivic in Tennessee has led to a dismal reality in which the state pumps a cascading amount of money into a system that fails on almost every metric. The only thing CoreCivic does well, it would seem, is extract profit from a model that rewards understaffing.

While Beasley’s initial goal for CCA may have been to “solve the prison problem and make a lot of money at the same time,” conditions at TTCC and other CoreCivic facilities that have since sprouted up—around Tennessee and across the rest of the country—show that the company has succeeded very little at the former and far more at the latter.  

Sources: Tennessee Lookout, The Tennessean, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, Nashville Banner, New York Times

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