Savannah Chrisley ‘Spent $500’ Trying to Communicate with Julie amid Prison Transit

Savannah Chrisley is sharing her experience with mom Julie Chrisley’s prison transport.

On the Jan. 28 episode of her Unlocked podcast, Savannah read aloud letters her mom wrote her while moving between prisons during the appeal process. In them, Julie, who is serving seven years for fraud and tax evasion, explained that she had to appear in-person in front of a judge, so she was taken around the country with groups of inmates who also had court dates in other counties.

“People in prison love to tell their horror stories, and I had heard more stories about transit and how horrible it was than anything else,” Julie wrote. “Word travels very fast in prison, and word of my appeal traveled like wildfire. There was so much misinformation, from officers to inmates, everyone had me going home. I knew in my heart it wasn’t happening, but I wanted to stay positive.”

“My anxiety began to creep up with every passing day,” she continued. “During transit, you don’t know what day you’ll be leaving the facility or where you’ll be taken to. According to the BOP [Bureau of Prisons] and the marshals who handle transit, it is a security breach to let the inmate know this information.”

Savannah then revealed that she never knew where Julie was during this time, so they were constantly attempting to get in touch with one another with no luck. Eventually, Julie thought of a creative way to let Savannah know she was okay.

“She called me multiple times a day, and so when I didn’t hear from her, I knew she was somewhere being transported,” Savannah recalled. “And one morning I got a call, and then someone pronounced their name, and I was like, ‘This isn’t my mom.’ I was like, ‘But I’m gonna answer it.’ And luckily she had gotten resourceful, she had given another woman that was in custody my phone number to call and to let me know that they had taken mom, and I was so grateful for that because at least I had answers, I had answers of where she was.”

She also revealed: “During the time that she was gone, I spent $500 easily in just communicating with her. Phone calls, emails, because it is so expensive to communicate with family, which should be against the law, honestly, because what helps these men and women in custody and what helps to reduce recidivism is interaction with the outside world, interaction with your family, to know that your family is still there, they still love you, to hear their voices. That’s what helps to better these men and women.”

When she finally got a hold of her mom, she had returned to the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky, where she was originally being held.

“She called me and she could barely say hello. She was sobbing,” Savannah said. “And to hear her — throughout this whole process, she has never cried to me on the phone — and this was when I heard her just completely broken, and it was so difficult to hear the hurt in her voice and to know the trauma that she had experienced.”

Julie allegedly told Savannah about unsafe living conditions and claimed that there were cameras in the bathrooms at the Grady County Detention Center in Oklahoma. After this, Savannah said she decided to take legislative action.

“These officers know what’s in this prison,” Savannah said. “There should never be a time where there are cameras in bathrooms, and that is something that I’m going to fight tooth and nail in Congress about.”

“There needs to be reforms surrounding this,” she added. “I also am in the process of writing a bill to put in Congress for women who are incarcerated. CPAC [the Conservative Political Action Conference] has brought me on board to be a senior fellow for criminal justice reform. So, I am working with their criminal justice center on a lot of reform initiatives and I am so grateful for that opportunity and job to be able to come in and make a difference because I am seeing things that 99% of these politicians haven’t seen and they don’t know exist.”

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Savannah shared that she is also calling for action when it comes to the disparities between incarcerated men and women. 

“We are in the process of putting a bill in front of Congress for women who are incarcerated that states that women can only be transported with biological women,” she explained. “Women can only be housed with biological women. Women get the same visitation rights as men because they don’t in a lot of places, and that you should be able to show up to a resentencing hearing via Zoom if you are already in federal custody. That not only takes away from the traumatic experience that the individual in custody may experience, but it also saves taxpayer dollars.”