Private KY prison abused handcuffed inmate, triggering civil rights suit, firings
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Guards placed a handcuffed inmate face-down on a bed in a cell and left him for 3 hours.
- A state investigation found the inmate was mistreated and staff weren’t entirely candid.
- Investigation led to staff discipline, leadership shakeup at Lee Adjustment Center.
Guards at a private prison in Eastern Kentucky abused a handcuffed man last year and weren’t initially candid about what happened during the episode, leading to a civil rights lawsuit and a shakeup in prison leadership, according to public records.
“A total screw-up from the get-go,” is how the prison’s assistant warden later described it to a state investigator.
At issue is staff misconduct at Lee Adjustment Center, the 866-bed prison in Lee County that is owned and operated by CoreCivic, a for-profit company headquartered outside Nashville. The Kentucky Department of Corrections last year paid CoreCivic $28.6 million to house state inmates at Lee Adjustment Center.
Lee reopened in 2017 when Kentucky resumed using private prisons after a four-year break because of allegations of inmate abuse and other problems, including riots.
Additionally, CoreCivic owns Southeast Kentucky Correctional Center in Floyd County, also used by the state of Kentucky, and Marion Adjustment Center in Marion County.
On Feb. 16, 2025, seven prison employees approached 36-year-old Lee inmate Glenn Peeler, who they said appeared to be intoxicated; handcuffed him; and placed him in a wheelchair to be taken to the medical unit, according to an internal affairs report by the Department of Corrections.
In his civil rights lawsuit, filed last month in U.S. District Court in Lexington, Peeler said he felt ill that day, but he was not intoxicated.
A Feb. 17, 2025, analysis of Peeler’s urine showed “negative results,” according to a Department of Corrections email obtained by the Herald-Leader.
Peeler said the prison staff held a grudge against him because of an excessive use-of-force grievance he filed against them after they injured his hand in a November 2024 incident involving pepper spray and two sets of handcuffs that were locked too tightly on him.
“OK, big guy, cuff up! We’re taking your Black a-- to the hole!” a correctional lieutenant told Peeler on Feb. 16, 2025, Peeler alleged in his suit. When he asked why he was being taken away, he said the lieutenant told him: “Because I said so. Now cuff the f--- up before I taze your f---ing ass!”
At 7:03 p.m., guards placed Peeler face-down on the bed in a medical observation cell and left him — still handcuffed — for the next three hours, according to the internal affairs report and his suit.
The Herald-Leader obtained the internal affairs report and other public documents through the Kentucky Open Records Act.
Security video of the incident shows Peeler falling off the bed about 45 minutes after the guards left him. He hit his head on a concrete wall and then crawled around on the floor. Peeler’s wrists continue to suffer painful nerve damage because of the incident, Peeler alleges in his lawsuit against seven people who worked at the prison.
Peeler urinated on himself while lying on the floor, something the prison staff noticed when they finally returned to uncuff him at 10:03 p.m.
By this point, his sweatpants and boxer shorts had fallen down, exposing him.
“I begged for help on the floor while they laughed,” Peeler wrote in his lawsuit
No medical assessment was performed on Peeler to see how he might have been hurt during his fall to the floor and his lengthy struggle in the restraints, according to the internal affairs report and Peeler’s suit.
However, prison staff filed an incident report indicating that an assessment was, in fact, completed, with the conclusion: “No injuries,” according to the internal affairs report. Both the employee signature and the time on the assessment report were illegible, internal affairs investigators said.
Also, the institutional report that prison staff filed after the incident left out a lot of relevant information, investigators noted. It simply stated that at 7:03 p.m., Peeler was placed in a medical observation cell “on a behavioral watch,” and at 10:03 p.m., “restraints were removed.”
Peeler immediately filed an inmate grievance at the prison with the details of his three-hour ordeal. It was denied.
The Department of Corrections central office in Frankfort opened an internal affairs investigation into the incident on March 18, 2025, after Peeler mailed them a handwritten letter of complaint.
’I’m not doing anything’
In theory, the state already knew about the incident — or at least, the incident as initially explained by prison staff. The Department of Corrections’ on-site monitor at Lee, Ashley Eckstrom, told a state investigator that she learned of the Peeler restraint and notified her superiors at the department in her Feb. 24 weekly report.
Peeler said in his lawsuit that he tried to explain what really happened to Eckstrom, but she didn’t want to get involved.
“She stated that, ‘They said you were drunk and acting crazy, trying to assault them, that’s why you were placed in the medical observation cell and then SEG (segregation).” I told her to look at the cameras and she said, ‘I don’t need to do that, I truly believe them, I’m not doing anything or talking to anybody,’” Peeler wrote in his suit.
Peeler’s lawsuit is “pro se,” which means he filed it by himself, without an attorney.
The Department of Corrections noted that CoreCivic did not issue disciplinary letters to the captain and lieutenant in charge of Peeler’s abusive restraint until March 18, more than a month after the incident, on the same day that state investigators began to ask the private prison questions about Peeler.
The March 18 disciplinary letters to employees said treating Peeler as they did “could have lead to positional asphyxia and/or other injuries ... This type of behavior cannot and will not be tolerated.”
48 days of delay
The state’s investigator said he struggled to get the private prison to give him a workable copy of security video of the incident so he could watch it.
Internal Affairs Capt. Bert Bare said the state first requested the video on March 21, 2025.
There were multiple delays for different reasons over the next 48 days — necessary employees were out of the office, the footage took a long time to download, the wrong footage was mailed — before Bare arranged for an online meeting with prison officials on May 8, 2025.
At that online meeting, Bare asked prison officials to play the security video on their shared screen. He recorded the meeting on his computer screen, “effectively downloading a copy of the video footage,” Bare wrote.
The security video essentially confirmed Peeler’s version of events in his complaint to state officials.
Interviews with prison employees, including several of the officers who participated in Peeler’s restraint, showed they realized they made mistakes, Bare wrote in his May 27, 2025, report.
The captain in command of that night’s shift at Lee told Bare “both he and (the lieutenant) accepted responsibility, received disciplinary action and understood why the disciplinary action was necessary, stating, ‘I didn’t disagree or dispute it at all ... I am thankful that it was not worse than it was,’” Bare wrote.
The internal affairs investigation led to consequences, state officials said.
The Department of Corrections “substantiated the inmate’s claims,” agency spokesman Price Wilborn told the Herald-Leader.
“Following the investigation, a meeting was held with the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet and CoreCivic leadership. As a result, CoreCivic chose to terminate the leadership at Lee Adjustment Center and the staff members involved in the incident,” Wilborn said.
A new warden, Danny Dodd, was installed at the prison last September.
In a prepared statement, CoreCivic spokesman Brian Todd said the company does not comment on matters involved in pending litigation.
“What I can share is that CoreCivic is committed to operating safe and secure facilities, including our Lee Adjustment Center,” Todd said.
“Our facilities are subject to multiple layers of oversight and are monitored very closely by our government partners to ensure full compliance with policies and procedures, including all applicable correctional standards,” Todd continued.
None of the prison employees named as defendants in the suit have filed a response yet. CoreCivic itself is not named as a defendant.
Last year, CoreCivic collected $2.21 billion in revenue, for a gross profit of $518 million, from its private prisons and government detention facilities, including new holding facilities for immigrants on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
