{NOTE: Oddly enough, I wrote this blog just days before the most recent incident at Trousdale Turner Correctional Facility.}

It’s easy to forget how our past impacts the present. People we’ll never know, places we’ve never been, plans that may or may not have ever come to fruition. All of these can shape who we are, and I don’t just mean as individuals, but as a society.

And when we look back at the things we once prioritized, and see where those things fall on our list today, it can illuminate a lot about where we’re headed.

Not too far from where I live, the skeleton of a massive project sits rotting, save the electrical beacons that still pulse atop a completed, but non-functional, cooling tower to ward off planes from hitting it in the night. I’m referring to the Hartsville Nuclear Plant.

This was a project of the Tennessee Valley Authority birthed out of a growing demand for electricity in the region in the 1960s. Construction on the site began in the mid-70s. In all, the grand vision would have seen two plants, with two reactors each, constructed and operational to meet growing demand by the mid-80s.

The project promised to deliver a massive amount of (relatively) clean, safe energy to millions. It would have lowered energy prices and powered homes, businesses, and entire communities for generations to come.

But then, the Three Mile Island Nuclear accident happened in 1979 and public opinion toward nuclear energy soured. The TVA had already sunk the modern equivalent of $44 BILLION dollars into the project when it was canceled. The reactors were all left in various stages of completion, though no nuclear material was ever stored on site.

While much criticism can certainly be leveled toward TVA for a multitude of things, what was clear is that the Hartsville Nuclear Plant was a massive investment for the public good.

Now, nearly fifty years later, only the bones of the project remain. It’s quite haunting, actually. One can’t see it in its current state and not think of Pripyat, the Ukrainian city which sprung up to support the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, abandoned in the aftermath of that catastrophe.

But here, much closer to home, in an idyllic meadow just north of the Cumberland River, the Hartsville Nuclear Plant looms as a reminder of dreams abandoned, hopes for future prosperity and freedom relinquished to the pressures of a fickle public.

And now, nearly fifty years later, a stone’s throw from that site of broken promises rests the Trousdale Turner Prison.

Trousdale Turner is owned and operated by CoreCivic, a Brentwood, Tennessee based company which, according to the company’s 2024 Annual Letter to Shareholders, brought in nearly $2 BILLION in revenue last year. CoreCivic operates more than 80 detention facilities across the United States. According its website, it has “partnered with Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) and its predecessor” for 40 years. The company proudly notes that “private facilities like ours offer more than 24% cost savings to taxpayers."

In case you were wondering: yes, CoreCivic is traded publicly on the New York Stock Exchange! In fact, its stock value is up nearly 60% in the last 5 years. You can become a shareholder. You can own a piece of this thriving business. In fact, if you have a stock portfolio, you might already be a partial owner, whether you know it or not.

Given the history of our country and the legacy of the 13th Amendment (which bans slavery “except as a punishment for crime”), I submit that one would strain to think of a quintessentially more American business: one in which confined human beings are the capital.

But it’s been a relatively easy sell…

The private prison whispers to John & Jane Q. Taxpayer:

We’ll keep those people who scare you out of sight and out of mind, and we’ll even save you money while we do it.

Isn’t that a deal, now?

We’ll keep your troubled youths from broken homes.

We’ll keep your strangers, struggling with crippling and undiagnosed mental illness.

We’ll keep those foreigners from taking your government benefits.

We’ll keep a disproportionate amount of people of color, too.

And you won’t even have to think about it.

They’ll stay nestled away in a peaceful valley where only the deer roam.

We’ll keep them out of sight.

Out of mind.

And surely you don’t care if we make a dollar at the same time, do you?

Now, I’m not writing to criticize CoreCivic, per se, though much criticism has been well deserved. There’s a reason Trousdale Turner is colloquially referred to as “the Thunderdome” of Tennessee prisons.

I’m not even writing to criticize the concept of incarceration, generally. That’s a far, far bigger topic. And certainly, there is a need for some level of separation of dangerous people from civil society. I would even agree that there is a need for some level of humane punishment. Surely, the concept of justice incorporates many possible goals and outcomes.

But Americans are more likely to be imprisoned by their government than any other citizenry on the face of the earth. As a percentage of population, we imprison more of our own people than China, Iran, North Korea, and even the “notoriously punitive” Singapore.

We have about 4% of the world’s population . . .

And more than 20% of its prisoners.

Nearly one quarter of people on the planet living behind bars are doing so here, in the good ole U.S.A.

The Land of the Free.

So… is this working? Are our prisons serving their purpose?

Cleary, they are failing at rehabilitation, because the U.S. also has the highest rates of recidivism in the world. If you enter an American prison at any time in your life, you’re likely to end up in one again.

But don’t worry: that makes some of us very, very wealthy.

Recidivism is good business, after all.

And so now, the Hartsville Nuclear Plant stands truly haunted.

The ghost of a future, once bright with hope and peace, now sits abandoned and looms menacing over the specter of human beings in shackles, locked away while each day they remain, a cash register dings.

How much is a human body worth?

CoreCivic can tell you.

Ding.

But it’s all okay.

So long as they remain nestled away in obscurity.

So long as we don’t have to look.

Thanks for reading.

All the best,

Brandon