Families Fear an Outbreak Inside Tennessee’s Prisons

The news that tens of thousands of incarcerated Tennesseans and their loved ones had been bracing for arrived on March 29. CoreCivic, the for-profit prison operator, announced that a staffer at South Central Correctional Center in Clifton, Tenn., had tested positive for COVID-19. The employee was receiving treatment at a hospital, a company spokesperson said, and 35 inmates who might have had contact with the employee had been placed in quarantine. 

It was inevitable that the pandemic would breach the walls of Tennessee’s prisons. Few, if any, corners of society have been spared. But public health experts, criminal justice officials and activists have been sounding the alarm for weeks that an outbreak could be especially devastating. Infectious diseases do not respect the security protocols of correctional facilities — in fact, they often thrive because of them. 

Tennessee’s incarcerated population — more than 30,000 people — lives in close quarters with little ability to follow social distancing guidelines. They must buy soap from a commissary, and they are not allowed to have the alcohol-based hand sanitizer recommended by the Centers for Disease Control for killing the COVID-19 virus. Officers and staff come and go, adding the possibility that the illness is being brought into the prison and carried back out into the community again.   

Those risks have prompted calls for mass clemency. Earlier this month, dozens of criminal justice and prison advocacy organizations filed a petition asking the Tennessee Supreme Court to take broad action to reduce the population of the state’s prisons and jails. The filing called for the release of people jailed for misdemeanors and all prisoners older than 50. According to the state’s most recent data, more than 4,100 people belong to the latter demographic. Data shows that older prisoners are more likely to die from COVID-19 and less likely to reoffend if they are released. 

The court has ordered local judges to work to reduce jail populations, but has not taken action with relation to the state’s prisons. Gov. Bill Lee has the power to unilaterally commute sentences and free vulnerable prisoners. As of press time, his office has not responded to a question about whether he’d consider doing so. 

For people with loved ones locked away in Tennessee prisons, the pandemic has only increased an ever-present sense of anxiety, uncertainty and isolation. 

Amy Thrasher’s longtime partner Chris is incarcerated at Turney Center Industrial Complex in Hickman County, about an hour west of Nashville. The two first got together some 30 years ago, and between them they have seven children and nine grandchildren. They split up in 2008 over Chris’ addiction to pills, and in 2012 he was arrested in Overton County after selling oxycodone to a confidential informant within 1,000 feet of a school. The charge triggered Tennessee’s drug-free school-zone law, meaning Chris received a mandatory 17-year sentence with a chance at parole after 12. He’s been at Turney Center for eight years now. He and Amy reunited a couple years into his incarceration. 

For Amy, Chris’ health was a concern anyway. He is 56 years old with a stent in his heart that is overdue to be replaced. Now she sits in her home in Kentucky, three-and-a-half hours away from the prison, watching daily briefings about the spread of a lethal illness and wondering when it will arrive at Chris’ prison, his unit, his cell. 

“Another concern I know for so many people right now is the lack of medical care in our prison system to begin with,” she says. “You know it is substandard on its best day. We know that they’re not going to send ventilators to a prison.”

In-person visitation has been suspended to limit the number of people going in and out of prisons, but Amy and Chris have been able to speak on the phone. Their calls are short, though — the result of a collective act of kindness on the inside. 

“They’ve got only three of their phones open at Turney Center, so they’re talking for two or three minutes instead of 30 so everybody gets a chance to talk,” Amy says. 

To the east of Nashville is Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, a prison operated by CoreCivic that has been plagued by reports of staffing and security issues since it opened in early 2016. A Tennessee woman named Susan spoke to the Scene about her concerns for a dear friend incarcerated there on the condition that her last name, and his name, not be used. For her, the pandemic has thickened the fog that surrounds prisons for the loved ones of people inside. 

“It’s terrifying for the fact that we really don’t know for sure ever what’s going on until we talk to someone or see our loved one in person,” she says.

She too worries about the ease with which the virus could spread in the prison — her friend is housed in an open bay, where inmates sleep on bunk beds in close quarters — and cites what she characterizes as subpar medical care, even in normal conditions. 

“They can’t even handle a common cold, let alone a pandemic,” she says. 

CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin says the company has “a coronavirus medical action plan in place at each of our facilities.” The plan, he says, includes the following:

Having medical staff participate in the intake process to identify those who are deemed high-risk of being infected with or contracting COVID-19;

Isolating those who are deemed high-risk as needed; and

Working with local and state health departments to conduct appropriate testing.

Tennessee Department of Correction officials also say they’re closely monitoring the situation. 

“We are engaged in constant communication with local health authorities and other state DOCs to evaluate potential developments and operational changes,” department spokesperson Dorinda Carter says in a written statement. “In the event an inmate presents with flu-like symptoms the department will begin immediate isolation, provide medical care, enact contact precautions and use of personal protective equipment (PPE). We have a plan in place to address isolation protocols, if necessary.”

Jeannie Alexander is a longtime advocate for incarcerated people who leads the No Exceptions Prison Collective. “True public safety measures now require us to decarcerate the prison population to the fullest extent possible,” she says.

“Before individuals in prison were prisoners, they were and remain family members,” says Alexander. “Our communities and our families need to be rejoined and made whole again to the greatest extent possible during this crisis. It was believed in the past that public safety required the caging of individuals, even long after they posed no risk. True public safety demands the release of those individuals. We can live in reality or die to protect an illusion.” 

On the phone from Kentucky, waiting for the day’s pandemic briefing and having just checked in with her partner Chris, Amy Thrasher puts it succinctly. 

“I know that there are a lot of people in there for a lot of bad things. But they are humans.”