Joshua Freeman and Lucía Estrada
On the night of June 8, several hundred prisoners broke out of their cells in Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, Tennessee’s largest prison, taking over the control room and breaking into the prison yard. They lit trash fires and took 3 correctional officers hostage. Monopoly media interviewed a wife of a prisoner who was on the phone with her husband during the riot, who reported that the “breaking point was that once again not every inmate had access to food”.
By 1am, over 100 law enforcement arrived at the prison, deploying tear gas and surveillance drones to monitor for escapes. By dawn the state forces had quashed the rebellion with multiple officers ending up in the hospital with stab wounds due to the prisoners’ resistance, according to monopoly media reports.
Trousdale Turner Correctional holds 2,672 people and is infamous for rampant corruption, sexual abuse, and violence by correctional officers. In February, the state placed warden Vince Vantell on administrative leave amid investigations into physical and sexual violence against prisoners. In April, a lawsuit by an inmate at Trousdale cited collusion between the Warden, correctional officers, and gangs to extort prisoners. Trousdale has enforced frequent lockdowns due to understaffing, with a yearly correctional officer turnover rate of one hundred and eighty percent.
An August Department of Justice investigation revealed over a decade of abuse and institutional sexual violence. However, the investigation has not led to any shift in conditions.
The conditions faced by the prisoners in Trousdale are common throughout the dungeons of the old state. In 2016 prisoners in Alabama formed the Free Alabama Movement and led a national prison strike, with organizers facing brutal retaliation from the police. In recent months, at least six prisoners in Virginia have set themselves on fire in protest of what they described as “intolerable” conditions within their facility. In contrast, the prisoners Trousdale Correctional engaged in an act of rebellion and directed their violence against the old state.
Trousdale Correctional is run by the largest private prison company in the United States, Core Civic, which is headquartered just outside of Nashville and is highly involved in Tennessee politics. The private prison company frequently spends vast amounts of money to push for laws that expand mass incarceration. The death rate in Trousdale is twice that of the state-run facilities.
Image: Police entering the facility during the prisoner uprising early June 9, Trousdale County Sheriff’s Department
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