An advisor to Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee told members of the Johnson City Noon Rotary Club on Monday that prison should be more than a place of incarceration and punishment.

Josh Smith, who spent five years in a federal prison on drug trafficking charges, also believes prison can be more than just a place for rehabilitation.

“Prison can also be a place of transformation,” said Smith, who started a multi-million dollar home improvement company following his release from prison in 2003 and is now the founder and CEO of Fourth Purpose Foundation.

Smith, who later sold his successful Knoxville-based Master Services business and launched the Fourth Purpose Foundation in 2019, said his organization promotes programs that take over where most rehabilitation programs leave off. He said rehab does not directly prepare people for when they leave prison walls.

“That requires transformation,” Smith said, noting that transforming America’s prisons also requires transforming the way America thinks about the purpose of prison.

“Ninety-five precent of the people in prison will be your neighbors again,” Smith said. “We demand that prisons be a place for justice, but we don’t think of what happens next.”

A Troubled Childhood

Smith said he grew up in a community outside of Nashville. His parents divorced when he was just 2, and he was raised by his mother.

She later remarried, but Smith said he was placed in state custody when he was 11 after being abused by his stepfather. By the time he was 16, Smith had been convicted of 10 felonies.

He was 21 years old when he was convicted on federal charges of cocaine and marijuana trafficking. It was in federal prison where Smith said he began his transformation. He said his “turning point” began when he had “an interaction with God” in his prison cell.

“On the outside I was tough, but inside I was dying,” Smith said.

Smith also made a connection with a number of white-collar criminals who had been convicted of federal misdeeds in the wake of Enron and other financial collapses. He said he learned from these felons, who were educated and had knowledge of real estate, finance and business.

“I was just a drug-dealing thug with a 10th grade education who had met up with these white collar criminals,” said Smith, who received a full pardon from President Donald Trump before he left office in 2021.

Changing His Path

When released from prison, Smith said he took the lessons he had learned behind bars to start his own business. He also tried to help other inmates gain the knowledge and support that helped him to turn his life around.

In 2019, Lee appointed Smith to serve on Tennessee’s Criminal Justice Reinvestment Task Force. He was recently named as the director of the governor’s Volunteer Mentorship Initiative.

“When I talked to Gov. Lee, I told him I was not interested in building a resume,” Smith said. “I want to make a difference.”

Smith said his foundation is helping to fund transformational organizations like Men of Valor, which has a recidivism rate of 15% among inmates who participate in the prison mentoring program.

He also noted that East Tennessee has a high number of former inmates returning to prison. He said Knox County has the highest recidivism rate in Tennessee at 74%, with Shelby County the lowest at 28%.