On June 5, 2025, Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) tapped Tennessee businessman Joshua J. Smith, 50, to serve as Deputy Director of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Smith, whom Trump pardoned in his first term, is the first former prisoner hired to hold any position at the prison agency. He will serve under BOP Director William Marshall, the former chief of the West Virginia Department of Corrections (DOC), who was appointed in April 2025, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2025, p.54.]

Smith’s criminal case stemmed from his 1996 arrest in Nashville on charges that eventually included 22 people accused of conspiring to import marijuana & cocaine from Texas. Smith pleaded guilty in April 1998. That August, after five of his co-conspirators also pleaded guilty, the government moved to depart from sentencing guidelines for Smith, citing his “substantial assistance.” He was then fined $12,500 and sentenced to five years in boot camp at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Manchester, Kentucky. See: United States v. Smith, USDC (M.D. Tenn.), Case No. 3:96-cr-00152.

When co-conspirator Curtis Barnes lost an appeal to his 114-month sentence on March 16, 2000, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit noted that Smith was a leader of the conspiracy—the likely reason he got five years even after testifying against Barnes, whose sentence was almost twice as long. “Joshua Smith testified that defendant [Barnes] personally sold a firearm to him when he knew that Smith was going to trade it for drugs,” the Court recalled. See: United States v. Barnes, 2000 U.S. App. LEXIS 4455 (6th Cir.).

From Prisoner to Millionaire

Smith has said that fellow prisoners at FCI-Manchester were the first educated people he ever knew, and he apprenticed himself to them. When he was released in 2003, his wife lost her government-subsidized housing because he was an ex-felon, he said, adding that he “begged” for the first job he got, making just $6 an hour.

Within five years he founded Master Dry in Knoxville in 2008, offering residential basement waterproofing. The source of his startup funds was unclear; Smith has said that he grew up with a poor single mom in government-subsidized housing. He eventually expanded the business to foundation services and created an umbrella corporation called Master Service Companies sometime before 2017. When he sold the firm in 2019, the price was not disclosed; however, it provided at least $8 million that he used to seed the nonprofit he founded.

Called the Fourth Purpose Foundation, that organization claims to make grants to other nonprofit groups that provide training for prison and jail guards, as well as resources for prisoners and “community-based resources” for criminal justice. Descriptions of the training and resources were not available. A slickly produced video posted to fourthpurpose.org declares that guards are “agents of transformation” for prisoners, though what that means wasn’t explained. It was produced by Prison Life Media, which the Fourth Purpose website says it founded “to change how the public sees [corrections].” Another video lauds the “prisonuity” of those held in a Tennessee lockup who craft photo-worthy plates of food from prison chow. No shots of the original meal tray as it was served were included. A website blog also lauds a “transformation” in the DOCs in Missouri and Florida, where Smith has been invited to speak.

The Foundation has extensive real estate investments, as well. Fourth Purpose bought a Knoxville property in 2020 for $500,000 to create a halfway house, with the City kicking in another $480,000. Called Dogan Gaither Flats, it opened in 2022. In a May 2023 bio, the Knoxville Rotary Club said that Smith also has made regular mission trips with Christian groups to Nicaraguan prisons.

Partnerships

Partnerships appear to be key to Smith’s success. Fourth Purpose was launched through East Tennessee Foundation, a much larger and older nonprofit. The halfway house project returns 8% annually, or about $40,000 each to Fourth Purpose and Knoxville, based on their reported investments. It is run by Men of Valor, an evangelical Christian group with a shout-out on the website of private prison giant CoreCivic. Men of Valor has a 12-year lease on the property, with a purchase option; Executive Director Raul Lopez is a Cuban immigrant who also runs Latinos for Tennessee, which focuses on recruiting people of Hispanic ancestry in GOP voter drives.

The halfway house property was part of $6 million in purchases made by the Foundation in historically Black areas of Knoxville that enjoy preferred tax treatment as Qualified Opportunity Zones. A property bought on Gay St. for $950,000 in 2020 was sold in May 2022 for $2.4 million, even though it was still a parking lot. Another property on E. Magnolia Ave. is being used as an art nonprofit. Like the other properties, it is located near a planned new ballpark for the Knoxville Smokies, a Chicago Cubs A-league farm team.

The Knoxville home that Smith purchased for $2.1 million in 2021 was listed for sale in October 2024 for $8.9 million. Its features include a “shooting range with moving target system,” which he would not have been able to use before his felony was pardoned. The listing noted that the range “can be converted to [a] bowling lane.”

In addition to Smith and his wife, the former Tracy Lynn Hyams, Fourth Purpose board members include Cyntoia Brown—whose life sentence for murdering her alleged pimp was commuted by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R) in 2019—and Brett Tolman, a former U.S. Attorney for Utah who took a $22,500 fee during Trump’s first term to hustle clemency for then-imprisoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. Trump pardoned Ulbricht shortly after returning to the White House in January 2025.

He earlier pardoned Smith, on the last day of his first term in 2021. In February 2024, Smith appeared on a panel of self-described conservatives in Texas discussing criminal justice reform, along with Tolman and Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Weybourne. Described as a “criminal justice advocate” in one local news story about his pardon, Smith struck a humble note during a 2017 interview, declaring: “I am getting to live a life everyday that I don’t deserve.”  

Additional sources: ClarksvilleNow, InsideOfKnoxville, KMTV, Knoxville News-Sentinel, LoopNET, NBC News, Nashville Tennessean, New York Times, Prison Life Media, WATE, WBIR, Redfin, RightOnCrime, Zillow

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