“Inmates are out of control, 200 staff shortage, inmates walking around with homemade knives, the gangs are controlling the units, drug overdoses regularly. This is just some of the issues.”
The Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) made headlines recently concerning sexual assaults in prison, staff shortages at prisons that make them dangerous places to work, and more, all while the state’s private prison operator, CoreCivic, seeks a $9.8 million budget boost next year.
The issues came to light in a new audit of the department by the Tennessee State Comptroller’s Office. That report found issues across TDOC.
But one section focused on Tiptonville’s Northwest Correctional Complex, about 130 miles north of Memphis in Lake County. That section paints a troubling image of the facility, especially with firsthand comments from the officers who work there, like the one above.
“[We] have no help and really if you get assaulted, you’re going to get assaulted until the inmates get tired of beating you because there are really no [correctional officers] available to come help you out,” another officer was quoted in the report. “It’s crazy.”
“I have been told that if I am in a situation where my life is being threatened, nobody will come to help me,” reads a comment from another officer.
Anecdotes from officers and data collected by the comptroller show a fragile hold on security at the facility. For example, offenders were free to move at will within their housing units during lockdowns. Physical security failures and dysfunctional equipment at Northwest were so bad, the comptroller legally omitted them from a federal report “because they would expose the facilities’ vulnerabilities.” Incidents of overdoses, contraband, destruction of state property, and assaults go unreported.
The issues at Northwest, officials said, stem from the same place: staffing shortages.
“With over 200 correctional officers short, the job is not safe,” wrote one officer from the prison. “We fight inmates every day. There is no discipline for their inmates. Security is a joke! Not enough staff.”
The comptroller’s report says 61 percent of Northwest’s positions were unfilled in the 2023 fiscal year. By August, two months into the state’s new fiscal year, the figure increased to 63 percent.
Northwest’s job vacancy rate has increased every year since 2020, when the rate was a still-high 46 percent. In 2023, Northwest had more unfilled positions than any other prison in the state.
The next-highest vacancy rate was at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution with 40 percent of its positions unfilled. Bledsoe County Correctional Complex in Pikeville had the lowest vacancy rate of just 9 percent.
Staffing issues have real-world consequences. Officials with the comptroller’s office saw that firsthand during a site visit in April. During a tour, the correctional officer escorting the group was called away for an overdose. With no other officers available, the group from the comptroller’s office was left alone in the prison yard.
For some of this, state officials recommended management take a hard look at the impacts vacancy rates and high turnover rates have on existing employees. Prison management said they have a hard time, however, hiring more employees because of the prison’s remote location, competition from other employers, the declining population in Northwest Tennessee, and the nature of the job.
Some of this may be helped, the comptroller said, with the appointment of some new high-ranking officials. In January, Gov. Bill Lee hired Frank Strada as the new TDOC commissioner. In June, Strada hired a new warden for Northwest, as well as a new associate warden for treatment and a new associate warden for security for the facility.
“It is too soon to determine whether the commissioner’s changes will bring sufficient positive change in the culture at the Northwest facility,” reads the report.
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