A US-based provider of behavioral healthcare services. It provides health services to people in prison and previously operated “shelters” for detaining unaccompanied immigrant children.
Acadia Healthcare Company, Inc., headquartered in Franklin, Tenn., is a provider of behavioral healthcare services. As of 2023, the company operates 253 behavioral healthcare facilities with approximately 11,200 beds across 38 states and Puerto Rico.
Acadia Healthcare provides substance use, mental health, and other “treatment” programs to incarcerated individuals under contracts with state and federal agencies. For example, the company has provided services to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections as part of its Opioid Addiction Treatment Program. Between 2023 and 2024, it also contracted with the Federal Bureau of Prisons for services related to opioid treatment programs at prisons in Maryland, New Hampshire, and West Virginia. Acadia Healthcare expanded its reach in the prison “treatment” industry in 2014 when it acquired CRC Health Group, a behavioral health company whose subsidiary Habit OPCO operated “community corrections” and reentry programs.
Acadia Healthcare has also participated in the jailing of unaccompanied immigrant children. In March 2019, it was revealed that the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)—the government agency tasked with detaining unaccompanied immigrant youth and holding them indefinitely until they are reunited with a sponsor—was utilizing numerous unregistered facilities to detain children “with mental health and behavioral challenges.” Acadia Healthcare owns and operates at least two of these facilities, Millcreek Behavioral Health in Fordyce, Ark., and Rolling Hills Hospital in Ada, Okla., which held at least nine immigrant children under ORR custody. It is unknown whether any immigrant children are still jailed in Acadia Healthcare’s facilities.
Both facilities that held immigrant children have faced numerous allegations of sexual harassment and physical abuse. A 2017 lawsuit alleged that Acadia’s Rolling Hills facility permitted sexual abuse of children, denied children medical care, ordered employees to destroy video surveillance footage, and refused to cooperate with state investigators. Millcreek has also been the subject of abuse allegations and was reportedly called “the misery mill” due to its rampant violence. In 2019, Millcreek was sued for negligence that resulted in youth-on-youth sexual assaults.