The Tennessee Prison for Women is located near downtown Nashville.  It's the State's largest women's prison, with an operating capacity of 744.  Both women who are sentenced to death in Tennessee are housed at TPW.

For a virtual tour of the facility, simply click on the program areas below.

Entrance

Once an inmate enters the Tennessee Prison for Women, she is separated from the outside world by a 17-foot fence and five coils of razor wire.  Each year, roughly 600 women give up their freedom in exchange for a stay at the compound.  A vast majority of the inmates at TPW will eventually go back home, with the exception of 7 women who will never leave.  The average age of a TPW inmate is 36.

Chapel

TPW offers nearly two dozen religious services per week in the chapel.  This includes Catholic and Protestant services, as well as a host of bible study classes led by local volunteers.  In addition to religious services, the chapel is also used by volunteers for a variety of special programs, including the crochet class, grief counseling, abuse recovery counseling, parenting classes and alcoholics anonymous... just to name a few.

Cafeteria

The TPW cafeteria serves up more than a million meals per year to inmates and staffers assigned to the prison.  In addition to that, the food services division employs up to 10% of the inmates at TPW, which helps to drastically reduce operating costs at the facility.

Although the cafeteria can seat up to 226 women at any given time, inmates are called to breakfast, lunch, and dinner by housing unit.  Meal times begin at the following times:

Breakfast - 6:00
Lunch - 11:30
Dinner - 4:30

Employees in the food services division say the inmates' favorite meal is the sliced beef liver with gravy and onions.

Visitation Gallery

More than 20,000 visitors come through the security checkpoint at TPW each year.  While inmates are permitted to visit in an outside area between the months of April and October, the visitation gallery is the primary location for inmates, their families and loved ones to reconnect on a weekly basis.  That said, many inmates in the Tennessee prison system never receive a visitor during their entire incarceration.