WPLN reports:
Another person has died inside Trousdale Turner Correctional Center.
CoreCivic, the private operator of the troubled prison, confirmed the death in a statement emailed to WPLN News. It says that staff found the man unresponsive. He was then transported to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The man was identified by the Department of Corrections as 45-year-old Clayton Thompson.
Trousdale has routinely been cited for having the highest number of deaths for a male prison in the country, prompting a justice department investigation in 2024. The facility has long been plagued with high staff turnover, violence and sexual assaults.
Trousdale Turner is run by private prison profiteer CoreCivic - a Tennessee-based operator of problematic prisons.
The state pays CoreCivic roughly $180 million annually - and may well beging spending even more - in spite of a poor record of performance by CoreCivic.
Its facilities have a murder rate four times higher than state-run facilities, a 2019 report showed. An audit by the state comptroller found CoreCivic maintains unreliable data and has destroyed public records.
State Rep. Aftyn Behn recently explained that the state seems intent on funding a prison-industrial complex and on skirting the law to carry out the death penalty.
I’m writing about this because those incarcerated at Tennessee prisons are still enduring abuse, or worse, like at CoreCivic’s Trousdale Turner facility, dying from neglect and battery despite the ongoing Department of Justice investigation; because the Tennessee legislature passed laws to ban books inside prisons; because TDOC is still botching executions and now preventing media from observing; because our loved ones are still wearing shackles seeing only 40 minutes of outdoor time in the yard PER MONTH (as indicated in a letter I received just this week from an individual at the Robertson County Jail); because, as we speak, the CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger is slow-walking his run to take Marsha Blackburn’s place in the US Senate; and, because CoreCivic, which owns and operates at least ten ICE detention facilities, reported $2.2 billion in total revenue in 2025 despite being responsible the deaths of 22 Tennesseans in their custody.