A comptroller’s audit of Tennessee’s prison system turned up 18 major findings, including failure to provide adequate oversight, which affected the department’s ability to fulfill its mission, and misclassification of eight deaths.

House Minority Leader Karen Camper believes the Legislature needs to renew a correction oversight committee, which can hold the Department of Correction accountable.

“This is a way the Legislature can reinsert itself on a regular basis,” said Camper, a Memphis Democrat.

The audit, which was released Friday, Jan. 10, detailed problems with reporting eight inmate deaths, saying they were classified as stemming from natural causes when five were caused by drug overdose, two by homicide and one by suicide.

Prisoner advocates say state numbers contradict CoreCivic defense

State Rep. Mike Stewart agreed, contending some deaths were reported to be natural when they could have been by fentanyl overdoses or murder.

“What the report says is we’ve been provided false information on a number of levels. So how are public actors supposed to figure out what’s going on if we’re getting false information from the folks in the prisons?” Stewart asked.

The Nashville Democrat said legislative oversight is needed, possibly followed by criminal prosecution or investigation by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation into the system. Otherwise, the federal court could take over the prison system again, costing taxpayers more to pay for outside management.

Continued shortcomings by the state’s private operator were detailed, along with the failure to start up a $15.3 million computer system after three years of work, putting it a year and a half behind schedule.

The department’s inability to oversee 14 facilities and 22,000 inmates hinders its mission “to operate safe and secure prisons and provide effective community supervision in order to enhance public safety,” the audit states.

The report also notes the state’s recidivism rate surpassed 47% in 2017, dipping only 2 points from the previous five years for the rate of released inmates who return to prison after three years. The rate was 40% for those held in state prisons compared to 50.9% for state inmates who served their time in county jails.

State Sen. Raumesh Akbari reacted by saying the department had “committed a serious breach of trust.”

“Whether you’re a taxpayer, a prison guard, an inmate or concerned family member the current state of prisons in Tennessee, outlined in this audit, will shock and disgust you,” said Akbari.

The Memphis Democrat said it is “abundantly clear” CoreCivic’s profit move is “undermining” the safety and rehabilitation of inmates and that the Department of Correction is to blame too.

“If Tennessee wants to make any progress on reforms to encourage productive re-entry to society, Gov. (Bill) Lee must move quickly to ensure Tennessee prisons stop breaking the law and start providing a safe and healthy environment for inmates and guards,” she said.

Though the Department of Correction made an effort to fill critical positions in state-run prisons and those operated by CoreCivic, in most cases the audit found they’re running with minimal staff.

The poor report comes on the heels of a 2017 audit that showed CoreCivic was leaving key posts unfilled, among many other problems, leading to criticism from lawmakers who blasted the private vendor specifically for shortcomings. CoreCivic is operating four state prisons under a $176.9 million contract.

The Department of Correction is set for a Monday, Jan. 13, hearing before the Government Operations Committee.

Department of Correction Commissioner Tony Parker said Friday the department concurs, or concurs partially, with all of the findings but contends it operates “safe and secure” prisons and “provides effective community supervision.”

In a statement, he said the department is dealing with the problems raised in the report, including improved staff training and policy and procedure revisions.

“The majority of the findings can be attributed to technology challenges, delayed reporting and the staff shortages that our state, like many others, currently experience,” Parker said in the statement.

Parker pointed out the department is certified by the Department of Justice for compliance with prison standards and is accredited by the American Correction Association.

The commissioner said the department “is committed to improved processes and procedures as well as enhancing our own internal auditing processes as recommended by the Comptroller that will help the TDOC be a better and more efficient department.”

Among its findings, the Comptroller of the Treasury audit determined:

• The department’s scores for overall yearly compliance do not give a clear measure of how a prison is performing.
• The ability to provide accurate and complete information on deaths and other serious incidents is “problematic.” The department didn’t accurately record inmates’ causes of death in its system, affecting the accuracy of death information.

TDOC reported three homicides in 2017-18, 12 suicides and 102 deaths by natural causes, according to an incident summary, although the comptroller’s report questioned eight of those.

The department reported 285 assaults without a weapon, 150 assaults with a weapon, 268 assaults by staff without a weapon and 199 assaults by staff with a weapon.

• Department management did not ensure state and CoreCivic staff followed incident reporting rules.
• TDOC failed to ensure prison health services staff entered all serious accidents, injuries and illnesses into the state’s system.
• TDOC and the Department of Finance & Administration’s Strategic Technology Solutions did not have effective internal controls in two areas, increasing the risk for errors or data loss.
• The department published inaccurate and incomplete inmate incident data in its fiscal 2018 statistical abstract.
• Management did not ensure state and CoreCivic staff followed guidelines for investigating sexual abuse and sexual harassment allegations.

From October 2017 through June 2019, the department substantiated only 58 cases of sexual abuse or sexual harassment, 32 cases of which involved staff-on-inmate sexual abuse. About 240 cases were unsubstantiated and 309 and were unfounded, with 30 cases still being investigated.

• The department set up its own informal procurement and payment system without proper review, enabling medical and mental health contractors to get out of paying for insufficient services through the use of a value-added credit system, which the audit questions.
• Centurion and Corizon, vendors for medical and mental health treatment, did not meet contractual health staff levels.

In 2018, the state paid Centurion $80.3 million in contracts and assessed it $598,600 in liquidated damages for failing to meet requirements. The state collected only $92,000. In six months for 2019, the state paid the vendor $48.9 million and assessed liquidated damages of $964,410, none of which has been collected, the audit shows.

In 2018, the state paid Corizon $15.2 million for mental health services and assessed damages of $377,750. Through the first six months of 2019, TDOC paid the company $10.3 million and assessed it $236,750, none of which has been collected, according to the audit.

• CoreCivic and state-run prisons did not ensure medical and mental health documents were placed in inmate files or completed.
• CoreCivic did not have adequate procedures to access inmate medication records during an outage of its new electronic medication administration system.

Turnover and lack of training affected distribution of medications in the prisons and included risks of physical harm to nurses, officers and inmates; the potential for inmates stealing pills; inmates not taking critical medications; and inmates trading or selling pills.

• CoreCivic staffing reports continue to have numerous errors.
• State and CoreCivic personnel did not give inmate screenings consistently to prevent sexual abuse.
• Supervisors, directors and administrators did not always review case records to make sure probation and parole offices performed their duties.
• Department management did not ensure staff and CoreCivic complied with public records laws and records management standards.