Inmates were subject to policies and practices championed by the Auburn model, such as "during the day the prisoners, with downcast eyes, labored silently together in workshops, while at night they slept alone in separate cells.
The State also contracted with private companies to operate factories inside the prison walls using convict labor.
In 1870 the state penitentiary reached a deal with the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, establishing the first convict-leasing program in the country.
This only added to growing frustrations among free laborers who staged a strike against the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company in 1871.
The plan also provided for a working farm outside the walls and mandated a separate system for younger offenders to isolate them from older, hardened criminals.
A separate women's wing was built on the northwest corner of the grounds that housed the female inmates who worked on the farm as well.
The original Tennessee State Penitentiary on Church Street was demolished in 1898, and salvageable materials were used in the construction of outbuildings at the new facility, creating a physical link from 1831 to the present.
Inmates are double celled in tiny cages like so many animals in a zoo, with an average of about 23 square feet in which each man lives, sleeps, performs his bodily functions, and spends a great portion of each day.
Beyond the deplorable lack of space, the cells are noisy, poorly lit, often in a state of disrepair and equipped with plumbing that is dangerous to the prisoner's health.
In addition, since overcrowding is a primary cause of all of the most serious problems at TSP, and is in turn made worse by the conditions it causes, the only effective remedy is to reduce the prison's population.
Church's song is about a man who is going to be executed in the electric chair at Farnworth praying to God for forgiveness for committing a murder.
Johnny Cash recorded the live album A Concert Behind Prison Walls there in 1974 with special guests Linda Ronstadt, Roy Clark, and Foster Brooks.