Tennessee's Chaotic Prisons

By John S. DeMott.

"There are three things you need to run a prison," said W.S. Neil, onetime warden of the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville, "a checkbook, a shotgun and the strap." Until the legislature outlawed corporal punishment, Neil routinely ordered the flogging of inmates with a leather strap. Now, as in those days of a generation ago, Tennessee has serious problems with its underfinanced and overcrowded penal system. In July there were riots at three prisons. In October a U.S. judge barred wardens from accepting any more inmates until the prison population was drastically cut. Last month a Memphis sheriff, with no room for a dozen felons, left them chained to a state prison fence.

The strangest twist yet came last week, as the state's Republican Governor and Democratic legislature struggled over a prison-reform bill. The corrections commissioner, Stephen Norris, was ordered jailed for contempt of court. Although Norris was spared a five-day prison sentence by an appeals court, Governor Lamar Alexander called the incident the "most bizarre, strange, weird and unusual set of events I've seen as Governor."

Judge Ray Lee Jenkins of Knoxville had moved against Norris when he failed to appear at a hearing to determine why Larry Simerly, a convicted car thief, was held in the Knox County Jail for 19 days after his six-year sentence had ended, mainly because of paperwork foul-ups. Norris' explanation: he had important prison matters to take up before the legislature in Nashville, and he felt his presence in Knoxville was not required. Jenkins ordered Norris to pay the car thief $1,000 in damages for his overextended sentence. In Nashville, the legislature has been hard pressed to meet a deadline set two months ago by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas A. Higgins to reduce the population of the state's 13 men's prisons and three inmate-reception centers from roughly 7,800 to 7,019 by New Year's Eve. Prisoners had been sleeping in gyms and administrative centers, and many, like Simerly, had been lodged in county jails to alleviate overcrowding. Construction of maximum-security facilities has not kept up with need. Brushy Mountain Prison in mountainous east Tennessee, which gained unwanted renown when Martin Luther King's killer James Earl Ray escaped in 1977, was last renovated 40 years ago. "Cottages" for youthful offenders, built at the village of Only during the 1970s, were converted to house vicious criminals, but soon became ungovernable warrens. Corruption spread. Former Governor Ray Blanton, now in jail for selling state liquor licenses, was accused of abusing his power of executive clemency in pardoning and paroling inmates, a scandal loosely dramatized in the current movie Marie.

Overcrowding worsened following Alexander's election in 1978 after he persuaded the legislature to impose mandatory prison sentences without parole for such crimes as murder, aggravated rape, armed robbery and arson; about 75 such "Class X" inmates are now in state and county jails. By 1982 conditions had grown so bad that U.S. Judge L. Clure Morton declared the entire system unconstitutional because of overcrowding and poor recreational and health facilities. Alexander has proposed that Tennessee contract the privately run Corrections Corporation of America to build and operate two 500-bed prisons, a suggestion that has been shelved by skeptical legislators. Before recessing last week, however, the legislature made some progress on an omnibus reform bill that would help depopulate the state's prisons of less dangerous criminals. One tactic: parole hearings would be scheduled for convicts who had served 95% of the time needed for eligibility. The necessary qualifying time for parole would continue to be lowered until the federally mandated limit of 7,019 prisoners was reached. Some progress has already been made. As of last week the inmate population was down to 7,231, a decline of more than 500 since October. But no one expects a quick fix to the festering problems of Tennessee's prisons.

With reporting by Fred Travis/Nashville