Charge Forward Podcast
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Charge Forward Podcast
Private Prisons = Public Crisis; How one father is working to change Tennessee’s Prison Problem
What if your child called you from prison to say he had to sleep with a knife just to survive?
For Tim Leeper, that horrifying moment became a painful turning point in a journey he never expected to take. His son Kylan entered Tennessee’s private prison system as a young man seeking redemption—but never made it out alive.
In this powerful episode of the Charge Forward Podcast, Tim shares the heartbreaking story of losing his son and the shocking realities he uncovered about the state’s private prison system—where 27% of inmates account for 63% of deaths. With firsthand accounts of violence, neglect, and systemic failure, Tim takes us inside a world where profit often comes before people.
This episode dives into:
- The nightmarish conditions inside Tennessee’s private prisons
- Why Kylan never attended a single rehabilitation class—despite being accepted as the waiting list was months and even years long.
- How private facilities like CoreCivic avoid accountability and devastate families
- Tim’s proposed legislation to remove inmates from high-death-rate facilities
- The mission of Kylan’s Light: turning grief into real change
This conversation is raw, emotional, and necessary. Tim’s story isn’t just about justice for his son—it’s a call to action for anyone who believes in dignity, reform, and protecting future lives.
Listen now and join the movement for meaningful prison reform.
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Dad. He said every morning, when the door pops at 5 am, he said I have to jump off my bunk, get my shoes on and grab my knife. And I didn't even know he had a knife. But he said the day that he went in there they told him that you need to buy a knife or make a knife, because everybody here has knives. That was one of the correctional officers and he never, ever went to the first class because they didn't have enough officers to get him to the class and he died before he could even get to his first class. And so the men of valor program is a wonderful program, but if you can't get there, you're not staffed appropriately.
Jim Cripps:Hey team, jim Cripps here with the Charge Forward Podcast and I've got a great guest for you today. I've known Tim for a long time. He's the owner and operator of both Tim Leaper Roofing and Mama's Metal Roofing here in Middle Tennessee. Tim, welcome to the show, thanks. Thanks for having me. Good deal, man. Well, you know we go way back. It's not like we hung out a lot in high school and that kind of thing, but I think we've known of each other for almost 35 years and Nikki works with you and of course I graduated with Nikki and Nikki's taking on some new roles there with you too, right?
Tim Leeper:Yeah, it sure is so Nikki has taken on some ownership in Mama's Metal Roofing. It sure is so Nikki has taken on some ownership in Mama's Metal Roofing. It's one of those things that we'll talk about here in just a little bit, but it's something that we created this company, and now I've created a job and created extra work for myself that I now don't need, and so Nikki's stepping up and going to fill that gap for us.
Jim Cripps:Yeah, and you started that company really for the main reason that we're we're sitting in the studio today and, um, you know, you had a ton of spare time on your hands before that with, you know, just running a small roofing shop called Timley roofing.
Tim Leeper:Yeah, that's right, I didn't have anything else to do, so I decided it might be a good idea just to go ahead in, and I'm not sure if now's the time. But you know, I'll tell you that Mama's Metal Roofing was born out of a need for my son, kylan, to have a place to come post-incarceration and learn a trade. I wanted him to learn the metal trade. I wanted him to learn how to install, how to measure and all those things and and so, um, now that that's become unnecessary, you know that's. You know Nikki steps up and comes in, and so it's going to be a win-win for everybody. You know Nikki is going to get something that that he's well-suited for, uh, and I'll get, uh, the opportunity to take a step back.
Jim Cripps:Yeah, that's awesome. Uh well, Nikki's worked with you for a long time, right? Yes?
Tim Leeper:Yes, nikki's worked with me on and off. He was my first employee whenever we started and uh, I want to say 2004. In November we began and I hired Nikki very early in 2005.
Jim Cripps:Yeah, so 20 years. I love it, man, I love it. Well, you know, I would love to say that we're here to have a joyful conversation, but the reality is sometimes reality is tough and you know, you guys have been through it 100 percent. You're trying to help make sure it doesn't happen to other families and so you know, uh, I'm sure at some point we'll we'll back way up and and talk about the yesteryear, but in recent years, um, you lost a son.
Tim Leeper:I did. Uh, my oldest son, kylan, was 25 years old. Twelve days after his birthday he passed, passed into private prison here in Middle Tennessee, in Trousdale Turner, that is owned and operated by Core Civic, and that set me out on this journey to see if I could right some wrongs. It set me out on a journey to say, okay, we have a broken prison system in our state, mainly because we have a private side of our prison system, but there's room for improvement in the other parts of the TDOC, other parts of the TDOC.
Tim Leeper:But you know, what I have found through this journey is that our prison system is something that we don't put a lot of time and effort into. From a legislative process, you know, we just allow, you know, our Tennessee Department of Corrections commissioner to run things, and so they were not the ones that brought in privatization. That has nothing to do with the commissioner, he just is. You know, he plays the hand that he's dealt. But what I have found is we just do the same things over and over and somehow expect a different result, and so there's a lot, there's a light that needs to be shined in that area, which is what we're working hard to do.
Jim Cripps:Absolutely Well, and I think the important piece of this is you know you're trying to prevent other families from having to go through this. That doesn't mean that there's not going to be bumps in the road, that doesn't mean that things are going to be perfect, but there's a lot of room for improvement in this regard.
Tim Leeper:Yeah, the bar is low, you know, in the prison industry, and many people will not have family members in prison. But honestly, we're one bad decision away One drink too many, one night at an event, at a gathering, you know, and one car wreck. And even if it's not our doings, it's somebody else. It's not what we do behind the wheel, it's what somebody else does many times, and so you can never factor in what somebody is going to do. And so if you've maybe had too much to drink and somebody else T-bones you, you still have to explain to the police officer why you're intoxicated.
Tim Leeper:And if that person happens to hit you and they pass, then all of a sudden we have a new set of problems on our hand and you know you don't want to find yourself on the radar of our judicial system, right or wrong. You know we all try to do the best that we can to live by the laws of the land and you know there are just some people that seem to gravitate towards our legal system because they're either they're not ready to grow up, to grow up or, for more nefarious reasons, they have substance abuse issues maybe, or they have mental illnesses, or they have undiagnosed trauma, that they're walking through life with a limp. And these people, the end of the road for many of those scenarios is a prison cell, unfortunately.
Jim Cripps:Yeah, you know, the reality is, I think, it's multifaceted and you're right, it's one bad decision or it's somebody else making a bad decision, or it's, you know, a doctor prescribing something that then you're dependent upon. Or, you know, like we talked about just briefly is, you know, a friend of mine was wrongly accused and convicted and served seven years. So it really is something that could affect anybody and you know you guys have got some legislation that is currently in process. I guess what has that road look like and where are we at in that process now?
Tim Leeper:Okay, that's a good question. I appreciate you asking that. You know we have legislation that we have brought forward. That we have brought forward, and what this legislation does in essence is it is a death accountability bill for private prisons. We're specifically targeting private prisons, and the only private prison contractor we have in the state of Tennessee is CoreCivic. They're based in Brentwood, that's their national home base, and Core Civic is.
Tim Leeper:Their death rates are always higher than other prisons of like size populations, and so I'll give you an example in 2023, which is when I began looking at these numbers, my son died in October of 23. And so, in fiscal year 23, there were 144 deaths in the Tennessee Department of Corrections. Of those deaths, around 63% were from private prisons. Once you take out the special needs facility, which is where people go to die, the special needs facility, which is where people go to die. But if you take the 13 regular prisons that we have in the state, minus the one that's special needs, 63% of those deaths came from privatization, and there are only four of the 13 prisons, or four of the remaining 13 prisons minus special needs.
Jim Cripps:Sure, so that's extremely high when you start looking at that. So they're what?
Tim Leeper:Almost a fourth of the prisons here in Tennessee, let's just say well, 27% roughly, but account for 63% of the deaths, yeah, but account for 63% of the deaths, yeah, and so this bill intends to make it a law that says if a private prison has double the number of deaths that an equally populated state-run prison has, then they can take and pull 10% of the population from that prison. And so what that will do is they're paid around $93 per day per inmate. And so if I were to take, say, 10% of Trousdale Turner's population, that equates to roughly $9 million a year, and so $9 million a year all of a sudden gets their attention. Sure.
Jim Cripps:But even then you're only talking about I mean, we're talking about if their death rate is double. To me that still seems extreme.
Tim Leeper:It's extreme and the bar you would think well, that's so high, there's no way they'll have doubled the deaths. But you know, in fiscal year 23, they had 28 deaths. 28 deaths is insane for one prison. It's insane. It was nearly 20% of all the deaths in the TDOC came from one prison, at Trousdale Turner. It's a dumpster fire.
Jim Cripps:I mean basically one every 13 days, yeah, and we're not talking about somebody that died of natural causes. We're talking about, I mean, murder or something in that line.
Tim Leeper:Murder, overdoses. There's an extreme amount, an insane amount of drugs that come in through these prisons and mainly my frame of reference is Trousdale because that's where my son was, but it's it's. It really is become an open air drug market. You know, you have affiliated gang members that are guards there, many, many affiliated members that are guards there, that are guards there, many, many affiliated members that are guards there. And so when you have affiliated guards and they really don't have a ton of accountability, we really need to have an oversight committee for our TDOC that can look into these situations. With our private prisons. We don't even have that.
Tim Leeper:That was done away with a few years ago, and so we're in the process of even working for legislation to bring back the oversight board, because if we have to have high numbers of deaths, there should be, on the other hand, a level of accountability for that, and right now that's not happening. But the death rate in essence has to be twice what an equivalent size prison that state run, and you would be surprised how many times they would have 10 percent If this were retroacted back to the beginning. There are many years that they would have 10 percent of their population pulled off because they just have such a high death rate Gosh and I guess I mean how did?
Jim Cripps:how did the drugs get in?
Tim Leeper:the guards. They throw them over the walls Actually did a video yesterday on on our nonprofit page. I've set up a nonprofit Kylan's Light Kylan my name, my son's name and then light to shine the light on the brokenness of our correction system. Name and then light to shine the light on the brokenness of our correction system. And that was a video that was just produced and put out on TikTok and I shared on some of our other social media platforms.
Tim Leeper:But the drugs there was a fence cut not long ago and contraband was placed inside the cut part of the fence. Again, they throw them over the wall. In footballs, they drone, drop them over the fence. Again, they throw them over the wall. In footballs, they drone, drop them over the walls. They have staff and vendors bring them in. They've been brought in in sealed packages of food before they're brought in in a number of ways, and what we found is it's not just one or two of the guards that are trying to make extra money, it's multiple staff that's bringing it in and it's coming in, like I say, also under vehicles when they go on medical transports.
Tim Leeper:There's dozens of ways these drugs are coming in and so everywhere you look, you have drugs in there, because if you're in a prison system and you're not getting much hope, you're not getting much rehabilitative opportunity, you're going to default back, when there's no hope, to what you know. Sure, and that's substance abuse many times. And so that's what's killing many of these inmates off. Often say I wonder what their budget for Narcan is there, because it's got to be astronomical, sure.
Jim Cripps:Well, and you know, oddly enough, just on the way here, you know I usually listen to podcasts or that type of stuff in my drive, and this was a study from probably 50 years ago and it was where they had a lab rat and they had water on one side of the cage and they had um, water that had drugs in it on the other side of the cage and for years they just they kept reliving this same scenario where the rats always wanted the drug and it killed them.
Jim Cripps:And luckily there was one researcher that said, well, they don't have anything else to do, and so he built what they called, like you know, the rat playground and they had better results, but still they defaulted to the drugged water until they put in this wonderful place. They put other rats to socialize with and because there was the freedom of enjoyment and bonding, then the rats no longer chose the drugged water and I mean basically just proved that a lot of times it was the situation in prison. I've got to believe it's the situation, because if you lose hope, I mean, what do you want to do? You want today to go away? You want today to go away, you want tomorrow to go away. You're just trying to speed up time. Um, and then in that scenario, I mean we've just completely given up on rehabilitation, and so is there any accountability on the rehabilitation side for privatized prisons, or is it just whatever they decide is important is important and nothing else?
Tim Leeper:They have some programs and I think many times the programs they have in place are just to placate the TDOC, to check a box, check a box. They don't have any college courses in any of the four private prisons they have in Tennessee, whereas they have college courses in some of the other state-run prisons. You know there are some opportunities, but I'll give you an example Recently there was a class in Trousdale that there were 23 spots and there were over 1,400 men on the waiting list for that spot. Now you can go 10 years into your sentence and never get a place in that program, and so that's just not realistic. If you have people who want to take these classes, want to be rehabilitated, you've got to make them available.
Tim Leeper:And another thing that we really don't talk about is a lot of times you're going from a parole board and the parole board say we'll come back when you've taken some classes. Here's the problem there are no classes available to them in Trousdale, turner, and so when you get to the next parole hearing, have you taken any classes where there are no classes available or taken? I found that true firsthand through my son Colin. He was actually accepted into the men of valor program and he never, ever went to the first class because they didn't have enough officers to get him to the class, and he died before he could even get to his first class. And so the men of valor program is a wonderful program, but if you can't get there, you're not staffed appropriately. What good does it do?
Jim Cripps:you. Yeah, it's pointless Again, it's just checking a box to say that you offer it. Hmm, um, let's take a step back if you will. So you know, um, as adolescents we make mistakes, where we're trying to grow up or becoming who we're supposed to be. Um, we don't have, you know, they were not living under our parents' roof, those those types of things. You're figuring that out.
Jim Cripps:Um, tell me a little bit about Colin's story. I mean, I remember, you know, I remember pictures. Just, you know, my favorite thing about Facebook is you kind of keep in touch with people that maybe you don't talk to every day. So I'm pictures of you know, you guys, the boys growing up, and vacations and and all the things, and periodically we would run into each other, usually at a dave ramsey event and, um, and then I remember seeing where you posted that that colin had had passed and but there's a lot of life that happened in between there. So if you will kind of paint me the picture of of you raising the boys, and you know what life looked like and how we got here, Sure, and so what I try to tell people is look, there's Colin's story was, you know, 25 years and 12 days long.
Tim Leeper:Very little of that story, just a few chapters were incarceration. The rest of it was a pretty good life. You know he was raised. You know we raised him in church, church camp, bible drill. We also did vacations. You know we traveled many times to a beach somewhere. We loved the Cayman Islands, so we were there many times. I coached their ball teams. You know me and the boys liked skiing. You know snow skiing, so we would go snow skiing different places. Colin loved fishing. You know we would fish. He was a much better fisherman than me. That's the reality of it. He was much better because he worked at it.
Tim Leeper:And so we did those things. We did all the things that you would think that would give a kid an opportunity to be successful in life. We had them in good schools in Wilson County. But you've got to have somebody willing to engage. So Callan just was not always willing to engage. He wanted to be the class clown, to make people laugh, and over the years he would get on the radar with the school and the school would inevitably every year call and say, hey, we need to have you in and have a conversation about college behavior. And then the teacher gave away to the guidance counselor, the principal, the vice principal and other teachers, and so it became more of an ordeal. Then he began to. In middle school he began to go in and out of alternative school just doing foolish things, nothing ever major, but it was enough of a behavioral distraction that that was not right to distract everybody else from their learning environment. And so I was always an advocate for the school to say, hey, you do what you need to do, we're not going, we are not going to let him, you know, take over these classrooms and be problematic in here. And so we did that.
Tim Leeper:And and there came a time in his early high school years maybe his ninth grade where you know, there was a judge Judge Tatum in Wilson County is one of my favorite people because he was always so fair and he said Kyle, your dad is out here working. He's an honorable man, he's got a good reputation, he's got a good company. And he says you're just not doing him any favors with the way that you're acting and that reflects poorly on him and his name. And he said I need to see better from you. And he said I'm going to give you one more chance. He'd been back and forth a couple of times. He said the next time you come before me you need to bring a toothbrush with you.
Tim Leeper:And so the next time he came in he said Mr Lieber. He said how is our behavior? Are we making the necessary changes? I said no, sir, we're not. I said we're not doing the things that we need to do. I don't think he's taking it serious. If he was taking it serious, he would be acting differently. And I said he is not, and so this has not been a deterrent up to this point. He said OK.
Tim Leeper:And so he took him and for nine months he went custody, okay. And during state custody he began to get better. You know, he had a few bumps along the way, but he realized he didn't want to be confined and so after nine months he was released back to us, which is always the goal, you know reintroduction back into the family unit. Well, when he came back, he began slowly and incrementally to go back into those troubled behavioral patterns. And during this time we've got him, you know, a psychiatrist. You know we're working. You know from a family to say OK, what's? What are we doing, what are we not doing?
Tim Leeper:There comes a point, when you have a wayward child, for whatever reason, that a parent has to be honest with himself and say, okay, I'm beyond what capabilities I have to control this situation.
Tim Leeper:I have leaned in and I've given all that I know how to give, and he's just not responding. And so I've come to the end of my ability as a parent. And now I need professional help. And so we had him you know, have professional help and I think that there was something, you know, a bit off. Do I think that he was, you know, crazy per se? I don't know that he was, but he probably had some behavioral challenges that we didn't quite get diagnosed or medicated properly. And the end result was he found his way into onto the scene of our judicial system, and that's not a place that you want to be. And so as he found himself there and I'll kind of land the plane with this as he found himself on the radar of our judicial system, that's when we realized, okay, what we feared is now coming to fruition. So we have to go into crisis mode and we have to manage now behavior from a crisis level versus from a proactive level, trying to get him help.
Jim Cripps:Gotcha. And so how long had he been incarcerated when, when this, this came to pass?
Tim Leeper:Somewhere around three and a half years he was. He'd already been to two parole hearings. He was not allowed to go. Well, he was. He didn't make it to his third parole hearing what we thought that he would have gotten out. We had a plan. I had the sheriff of Wilson County, which was the sheriff of the year that year.
Tim Leeper:Robert Bryan had wrote him a letter and shared what he thought because he had observed him. He said you know Tim? He said he's a good boy, he's just not quite ready to grow up, and that will take shape soon. And he said when he has a reason to and he said so, it's not that he's a bad kid reason to. And uh, and he said so, it's not that he's a bad kid, it's just that he's just, he's got these behavioral issues that that won't allow him to do what he needs to do. But I think he'll be fine, he'll be well-adjusted and successful once he's on the backside of this. And so he asked me if he could write a letter for him. And I've never forgotten that and I never will.
Tim Leeper:But we, you know we again we're now on this, this place where we're having to manage by crisis, and you know when you start having parole hearings now we're at a level that you never envision as a parent. When your child is born, you wonder where they're going to work. You wonder where you know who they'll marry, how many children they have, where they will live A number of things you wonder. You never wonder how the parole hearing is going to go and you certainly never. You never think and you never consider in all your plans for your children that you'll bury them one day. That's just something that never crosses your mind that you'll bury that one day.
Jim Cripps:That's just something that never crosses your mind. What's something? Because I'm sure there's people that are listening to a clip from this, or listen to a short piece of it, and they think this can't happen to them. What would you tell somebody like that?
Tim Leeper:I would tell them. I pray and hope that it does not. I would never wish this on anybody, but it does happen. You know, for whatever reason, some children are more susceptible to substance abuse than others, and it just takes that first time getting high for them to go to that and gravitate towards that. Sometimes it's behavioral issues or mental issues, you know, and behavioral in my son's case, and I would go ahead and group him in. Maybe you know some mental issues that weren't diagnosed. Sometimes it's those things and sometimes it's just a bad decision.
Tim Leeper:You know, we just make that decision to have one too many drinks, one too many beers and somebody else crosses the center line and hits us and they die. Now, all of a sudden you're on the hook, you know, for this death, and sometimes that can cost eight years of your life, sure, and if you're, you know, found in a situation like that, nobody ever thinks that it will happen to them until, unconsciously, it does happen to them. And so when that does happen, I just would tell you that there's very little help for people that are incarcerated in our prison system, and what I mean by that is I get calls because people have been following this legislation and they see our nonprofit and we produce videos. But I get so many calls from families that say I don't know if my loved one is dead. We don't get any information and it's as bad as you think. It is as bad as you think it is. It's worse because you don't know if your loved one's alive or dead. There are times that people have found out weeks and months later that their loved one has passed and somebody had to bury that body. And so you know they they have didn't even have a chance to say goodbye to their loved ones. In some cases that's extreme, but it happened at Trousdale and sometimes that's a mix up in communication because typically the chaplain will call in that case.
Tim Leeper:But so many families reach out to me and say Tim, can you do, you think you can help me find out if my person is safe? That should never be up to an individual or even a nonprofit to give information to people who are incarcerated. Even a nonprofit to give information to people who are incarcerated and I just struggle to think that these are Tennessee residents who happen to be incarcerated Do their lives not matter any more than to let the family know that they're safe, that they're alive? If there's a stabbing, why should they not know that this happened to their loved one? They don't get those answers. When somebody's their loved one, they don't get those answers. When somebody's stabbed in prison, you don't get those answers. You don't let your son stab until he calls, or another inmate calls on their behalf, and so they just keep you in the dark. And that's a terrible way to live, because now not only is the offender the one doing this time and and he's paying for his crime against our society, but now the families are also dragged into that.
Jim Cripps:Sure, Well, you said something there that had never even crossed my mind that there would be so little accountability that another inmate might be the one to call and tell you that something happened.
Tim Leeper:That happened to us quite a few times when our son was locked down or he was in segregation for whatever reason, and you can go into those places for refusing a cell assignment. They call it a RCA refusing cell assignment is the shorthand for it. But what that means is if there's a gang member or if there's somebody in there that is mean to do you harm and you say, hey, I can't go in there with that person, can you put me somewhere else? That's a refusing cell assignment and so that can get you written up, which in turn can lose your parole. So it doesn't matter if that guy's killed one or two people.
Tim Leeper:There was a situation in one of the core civic prisons last year. Kid named Matthew Vogel I see he was a kid who was 39 years old, had four children. He was in there for a parole violation in South Central I believe it's South Central Prison, which was a core civic prison. There was a guy in there that already killed one cellmate. He was in there for murder, so that means he had committed a second core civic prison. There was a guy in there that had already killed one cellmate. He was in there for murder, so that means he had committed a second murder in prison. He didn't feel safe with him in there and so he told them he didn't feel safe, didn't matter, they put him in there. The day before he was to go home he was killed in a cell by this cellmate that he begged not to go in there. They don't care, they are desensitized to death and human suffering. And again, I could tell you story after story. That's not why we're here. Person does not realize how violent prison really is or can be, especially in private prisons where they have so few correctional officers to oversee the violence and the things that I could tell you that I want today. Just know that as bad as you think prison is, it's worse and especially in our private prisons, and there has to be a level of accountability. When somebody makes a mistake and they end up in a prison, that sentence is not a death sentence, it's not a violent sentence, it's not a prison rape sentence and it's not it the mental anxiety that that my son must have gone through in his life.
Tim Leeper:He would say, dad, he said every morning when the door pops at 5 am, he said I have to jump off my bunk, get my shoes on and grab my knife, and I didn't even know he had a knife. But he said the day that he went in there they told him that you need to buy a knife or make a knife, because everybody here has knives. That was one of the correctional officers intake officers that told him this. And he realized quickly it was true, because the first week he was there he was stabbed. There was a guy that's trying to rob him, so he stabbed him in his arm know, a defensive one, right and he had a scar about the size of my pinky and also about the height of my pinky. You know, it's a keloid scar when you don't get any treatment, sure? So he never got stitches and so we visit him a couple months later, when he finally got our visitation right and he said that's where he stabbed me, and we realized, wow, you know, because he's sitting there for three days with he didn't go to the hospital, they didn't give him stitches. I had to send him a ten dollar cash out for dial soap and bandages because they weren't giving him medical treatment, and so for three days, with bloody clothes and no shower, he sat in the cell not knowing where he was going to go next, and so he began to write letters and grievances that we have on file, but none of those things really matter now, and so what they're being used for is there's a lawsuit. You know, my grandson now has a trust that's been formed. I'm not next of kin, he is next of kin, and so because I am not next of kin, I can't sue CoreCivic. I would love to sue CoreCivic but I can't, and so he his trust is is suing CoreCivic, and so that's what we're using some of these grievances for now. Sure, but I just would want the listeners to know that. You know, you never think it can happen to you until it does, and when it does, it's worse than anything I've ever seen. We treat our prisoners of war in this country better than we treat our prisoners that live here and are residents of our states and our country. We also treat livestock better than we treat some of our prisoners, and not in every case, and some prisons are better than others, but our private prisons in this state are ran at a grotesque level.
Tim Leeper:There will be times that you look at the food that's going out that they're serving, and there'll be signs right on it. I've got several pictures of it. Not for human consumption. You know, and that's what they're feeding these inmates. They just they have to get enough food into them.
Tim Leeper:I would love for them to take, just show up randomly, take a tray off the line and then go test it for how many calories that that it has in it. How many calories should you have on a daily basis? Because if 2,000 calories is what you need on a daily basis, I would say that they're probably getting somewhere around half that, and that's just my guess. That's not scientific and that's not me measuring it, but I've seen the pictures of these plates that they have to survive on and many times, you know you can get sick on them. There are instances where people were spraying bleach on them. You know there are feces in some of the food in some instances and so it's just prison's not a place that you ever imagined that you would be and it's certainly a place that you never want to. You know, get on their radar because once you're in, there's no help for you in there, sure Well.
Jim Cripps:I think you know, probably before our conversation, but I mean even especially now. I mean I would assume that if you're going to prison it's a death sentence.
Tim Leeper:Can be. It can be in some cases it's a death sentence Can be. It can be in some cases. There are people that make it out. But you told a very interesting story about a guy that actually worked with you, if that's okay to share, and so one of the ways that he was able to find they found value in him and that he knew how to work on phones, and there are so many contraband phones inside a prison People. People wouldn't believe it, but I've got videos from inmates on a regular basis. You know, when Kyle was there, I paid a certain amount of money for him to build a video. Call us from time to time not often, but you know from time to time when he had access to somebody in that that area of the prison and so you know from time to time when he had access to somebody in that that area of the prison and so, uh, you know. But his value was found that he could work in fixed phones and so they kind of protected him for that reason.
Jim Cripps:Oh, he told me that directly. Um, in fact, the day that he got out and he was just in transparency, um, he was wrongly accused. We all knew that there was no way that he had done what they said he had done. And then he served seven years before it finally got overturned and the judge that overturned it said that the DA acted in gross negligence I believe that was the exact words Um but because she had already become a judge, she was untouchable for her actions. Uh, which I think is just absolutely disgusting. Um, but he told me he said um, and even the, the language that he used, um post getting out, uh, was just drastically different and I almost didn't recognize him. And um, and he said because I worked here, I had value and they called them flats and flips, depending on what kind of phones they were, and he said I could fix phones and so I was left alone to some degree.
Jim Cripps:Uh, which just blows your mind because in my head and you telling you, telling the story of Colin, how it, when, when the door opened it was, you went to war and I got to believe that that's exactly how it is. So it's PTSD, even even if you, even if you get paroled, even if you out that PTSD has got to be dealt with, it's never going to go away. And so for us to think that this is a good system or that this is a good program, even down to the food you're talking about, you know, they've done studies where, if prisoners were served better foods, the violence comes down significantly. Well, okay, how could could we not avoid some of these deaths? I get that it's a, it's a business, but it would. To what extent? You know how much does that profit mean?
Tim Leeper:Yeah, no, you're, you're, you're all over it. At the end of the day, we just have to look at what we have and we have to say, ok, where are the areas that are broken? Where can we lean into? This is 2025, for God's sakes, you know, this is not to 1974, yeah, and so things have changed and the way that we treat people should have changed and improved along the way, and so we still have an archaic system that needs to be revised. It needs to be overhauled.
Tim Leeper:Now can I say that there are good things about the system? Of course I can, and I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we need to have an honest assessment of what we're doing to how we're doing incarceration in our state and how we're doing rehabilitative opportunities. What are we doing to help the people that get out? And that's not even back to your point. Help the people that get out, and that's not even back to your point. That doesn't even speak to the number of people that are innocent in our prison system, because they happen more than you realize. In your person's case, it was an accusation of somebody who had previously accused somebody else, and it was a money grab. Yeah, I mean, I think hindsight's always 20, 20. I mean, I think hindsight's always 20-20. And if she had said, hey, I'm just looking for money, and he knew what the future held, it would have been easier for him to give her $5,000 and save seven years of his life and all the trauma that came along with that. Absolutely, because it's not Sunday school when you go into these prison cells, and so it's survival of the fittest, you are going into, make no mistake, a gladiator arena, you're being thrown into a lion's den and I would just, if anyone doesn't know what it's like, I've made some videos that are on our Kylan's Light page. We have a TikTok page and Facebook. It's simply Kylan's Light on Facebook and you can see all the videos that we have produced. And we will continue to produce these, because we have to get the attention of the people in our state and make them realize that these are not throwaways of society.
Tim Leeper:Yes, there are people in our prison system that should never walk among us again, because they're just violent and they don't. They have no direction and there's no hope for rehabilitating him. Those guys, some of those guys, but what about the ones that can be rehabilitated? What about the ones that can be saved? What about the people that are young offenders, that have made mistakes and still have time to make changes and bring value back into their communities? Those guys are out there. Our prison is full of them. We just have to give them the opportunity.
Tim Leeper:Typically, what happens is you are judged based on the worst day of your life and the crime that you committed in perpetuity, never to be changed, never to. You don't grow out of it. That is what you will always be remembered for, and that's fine. But I've done things in my life that has landed me in the prison system. You don't grow out of it. That is what you will always be remembered for, and that's fine. But I've done things in my life that has landed me in the prison system. But I made reconciliation to my community, to my family, and I said I'm not going to do this. God did not create me to go out here and just do foolishness, and so I'm going to spend the rest of my life making amends for this and being the person that I can be that adds the most value to our community. I'm going to be an adder, I'm not going to be a taker, and so that's what we have to do to our young men who are going into our prison system Give them the tools and the opportunity to address those unresolved traumas that they have.
Tim Leeper:They are walking around in their lives with limps because they've learned to walk without knowing what's wrong, why they behave a certain way, why they act a certain way. Well, there's sexual abuse. That's real. There's physical and violence abuse that's real abuse. That's real. Some people are raised by single mothers or fathers and they don't have the energy and the time many times to invest in them. And this is not to demean single motherhood or fatherhood, but it's oftentimes easier when there's two people, you know, fighting for the same goal.
Tim Leeper:But these people walking around with all these unresolved traumas and substance abuse issues and mental issues, they need to be weeded out and say okay, your level of help is different, your level of help needs to be this and we need to bring you some impulse control. And we need to bring you some impulse control. We need to give you some, to have some forgiveness therapy that we do and modeled after you know, evidence based programming, which we have. There's evidence based programming out there that we could use, but, for whatever reason, we don't spend the money on these people and they're going to come back into our communities. They're coming back to live amongst our children and our grandchildren, and I personally would much rather have somebody that's well-adjusted, makes different decisions because he's had the tools given to him to live amongst my family members and going to my church. I want that type of individual, and so you know you will pay one way or the other. You will pay in recidivism by having these people continue to go in to our prison system, and that is costly for us, or you will pay to invest in rehabilitative opportunities for these people to get these things fixed.
Tim Leeper:And guess what? Now, all of a sudden, we're mending families. We're fixing families not only now but generationally, because if we begin to make these changes and Uncle Tony is all of a sudden out of prison he's been out of prison for the last 15 years, but something was different this time he got tools when he was in this time and he's different. He's holding down a job, he's doing these things, that that and making different decisions. He's talking a little bit different, but uncle Tony is different, and now the nieces and nephews, the children and the other family members want to know what's different about him.
Tim Leeper:And so they go and he says, hey, I finally was able to to to deal with some of the things in my life and you know, and, and candidly, I was dealing with some traumas and and't know that and it made me behave differently. But but I know that now, and so that's not giving somebody a pass, that saying, hey, you know, these folks maybe haven't had the same opportunities that I've had to go to a psychiatrist, you know, to have these things diagnosed. And so I just think that there is a gap that we're missing and taking care of these people, a gap that we're missing and taking care of these people. And I know there are people who have left victims behind. Sure, and to those victims, you know, I would simply say I can never replace the person that was taken from you or the damage that was visited on your family, but what I could hope is that we can have a changed individual.
Tim Leeper:Even if he never gets out of prison, he can still have value inside that prison system, to to look at his life and say, ok, I wish I could talk to my 22 year old self again, because I would tell him these things, but since I can't.
Tim Leeper:I'm going to tell you that young person who's going to have a chance to get back out, don't do these things. Do these things, invest in these things. Invest in educational opportunities, invest in a career. Find somebody who will apprentice you and learn to trade, fill in the blank. And that guy can still have value in a prison system if we're utilizing them that way. But we still have to give those guys a hope that they can make a difference in somebody else's life and that will make men. We derive our sense of self and pleasure by being able to provide for those around us, our family, and even if that provision is different now and we are providing wisdom and insight to these younger men that are coming into this prison system so that they don't return the same way that they went in, they're still valuing that guy.
Jim Cripps:Absolutely Well. It's the self-worth that's derived from that, which is also where a lot of hope is derived, and so I get it. If you're in a hopeless situation, and the other thing that I see that is especially in these private prisons, where the death rate is so much higher, the violence rate is so much higher is what do I expect out of that person If they have to become an animal in order to survive every time the door opens, how would I expect them to be assimilated or, better, to come back into society? I couldn't. I mean, if you just think, close your eyes and think about that for a moment where number one on minute one, you're told you need to buy or make a knife in order to make it to tomorrow, and that same system is saying you'll need to be rehabilitated before you get out of here. You just said I had to become something worse than I was to get here in order to survive to tomorrow. That's insanity for them to think that that's going to work.
Tim Leeper:Yeah, no, that's fair. And I just I hurt for the families that are living this incarceration with their offenders, because they're having to bring it back home with them and they're having to make calls, just like this young lady who lived. I'll just share with you. She lived in Old Hickory, without using her name, but her brother is in this private prison in tennessee somewhere. We'll we'll allow it to remain unnamed. She's a good person, she's, but but she's hurting because the person she grew up with and spent christmas morning with and went on family vacations with and did things made, made a mistake in his life. He's never going to get back out, he's got a life sentence, but he's also not a monster and he did make a terrible mistake that can't be undone. But to listen to her story and realize that she and probably her husband are sharing in this incarceration experience, you know, I would just tell you that the TDOC, the Tennessee Department of Corrections, you know, in some cases by, you know by private prisons, are making orphans out of these children.
Tim Leeper:My grandson is now will grow up without a father, and that's so. We haven't talked about baby Kylan, but he will. Now. My son had a child while he was incarcerated. We didn't know it until he was incarcerated. And so I have a grandson. His name is Kylan, also just like my son, he will turn five in August, but he will never know his dad. He will never know how funny he was. He will never know the value that he probably would have placed into being a father. He never know the value that he would have lifted him up and we feel like that he would have been a good dad because he saw I you know what a good dad, you know, did for his children, and when I talked to kylan in the last couple years, especially after baby kylan was born, it was always a hopeful conversation like dad, where am I going to stay?
Tim Leeper:I'm going to work at the roofing company, and so you're going to teach me how to do these things and I'll learn it. He said. I will be a good learner, I'll be a fast learner. He said. But you know, I'm going to, I'm going to have some needs. I'm going to need a phone, I'm going to need a vehicle to get back and forth, he said, because I've got to be able to make a living. I don't have the money to buy a car right now. I don't have the money for insurance, and so we had a plan. We would plan what he did, where he was going to stay, where you know baby Kylan's going to live, and we would even talk about, you know, custody. You know if he has him and if she has him, how does that work, and so, but that planning in those conversations that we had, that's hope. That's hope and that allowed, it's also a release. It lets your mind float away just for 30 minutes and not team is Jim Cripps here with the charge for podcast.
Jim Cripps:I just want to tell you I love you, I appreciate you listening, I appreciate you for subscribing and sharing the Charge Forward Podcast with people you know and you love, because that's what we're here for. We are here to share the amazing stories, the things that people have been through, the ways that they were able to improve their life, so that you can take little nuggets from theirs and help improve your story and be better tomorrow than you were today. I hope that this is the tool you needed at the right time and that you find value in the amazing guests that we bring each and every week. Thanks so much and don't forget new episodes drop every Thursday.