By: Mandy Spears

A companion report looks at historical trends in Tennessee’s incarcerated and corrections populations. Two additional reports will focus on community supervision, prison releases, and recidivism as well as pre-trial incarceration.

Key Takeaways:

• Funded almost entirely by state revenues, the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) is consistently among the state’s six largest state revenue expenses.

• Incarceration costs make up over 80% of TDOC spending.

• Since FY 1995, TDOC spending increased by an average of 4.1% per year — the same as growth in overall state revenue spending.

• TDOC houses 27% of state prisoners in local jails to manage overcrowding in state facilities, a factor in slowing the growth of the department’s budget.

Nashville, TN: The Sycamore Institute, 2019. 7p.

By: Mandy Spears

This report provides context for discussions about criminal justice reform, using historical data to reveal trends in Tennessee’s incarcerated and corrections populations. It focuses on state prisoners, who fall under the jurisdiction of the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC).

A companion report looks at the budgetary aspects of incarceration in Tennessee. Two additional reports will focus on community supervision, prison releases, and recidivism as well as pre-trial incarceration.

Key Takeaways:

• Tennessee’s state felony incarceration rate grew 68% from FY 1991-2018. Trends in state incarceration and crime rates vary significantly by offense type.

• State prisoners are disproportionately black, although the proportion of black inmates is falling. White women are the fastest growing segment of state prisoners.

• The state prisoner population is getting older, which could affect the state budget since older individuals tend to incur more medical expenses.

• In FY 2018, Tennessee housed 73% of its incarcerated felons in state prisons and 27% in local jails. The majority of state prisoners in local jails are waiting for space in a state facility.

• Average sentences and time served are getting longer for most offense types, especially drug offenders who make up a growing share of incarcerations.

Nashville, TN: The Syramore Institute, 2019. 11p.

By The Death Penalty Information Center

The Death Penalty Information Center’s new report on race and the death penal­ty in Tennessee places the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem in his­tor­i­cal con­text, doc­u­ment­ing how racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and racial vio­lence con­tin­ue to influ­ence the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty. Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty, released June 22, 2023, notes that as the Tennessee Department of Correction devel­ops new lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols and pre­pares to resume exe­cu­tions, the state may find it use­ful to under­stand how Tennessee arrived at its cur­rent cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem.

The report explains that in the 18th and 19th cen­turies, the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Tennessee was large­ly depen­dent on the race of the defen­dant. There were 13 offens­es for which Black peo­ple could receive the death penal­ty, com­pared to just two offens­es that could result in death sen­tences for white cit­i­zens. From the begin­ning, the death penal­ty was applied dif­fer­ent­ly based on race.  The death penal­ty was not the only form of lethal pun­ish­ment that tar­get­ed Black Tennesseans. The report ties Tennessee’s use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to its trou­bled his­to­ry of racial ter­ror. Tennessee was the site of more than 500 lynch­ings, accord­ing to Tennesseans for Historical Justice, and a nation­wide study of death sen­tences between 1989 and 2017 found a sig­nif­i­cant sta­tis­ti­cal rela­tion­ship between a state’s his­to­ry of lynch­ing and the num­ber of death sen­tences giv­en to Black defendants. 

Many of the his­tor­i­cal issues relat­ed to race in the state, includ­ing seg­re­ga­tion and Black vot­er dis­en­fran­chise­ment, are still preva­lent in Tennessee today. For exam­ple, the state has the high­est pro­por­tion of dis­en­fran­chised Black res­i­dents in the United States, with more than 1 in 5 Black peo­ple unable to vote. Concerns regard­ing vot­er dis­en­fran­chise­ment have been height­ened as the state leg­is­la­ture has con­tin­ued to remove pow­er from local­ly elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors to han­dle var­i­ous aspects of cap­i­tal cas­es, and shift­ed the author­i­ty to the state’s Attorney General, who is not elected. 

Washington DC: Death Penalty Information Center, 2023. 69p.