‘I Can’t Stay Silent:’ Why Savannah Chrisley Is Speaking Out Against America’s Prison System
The reality star-turned-prison reform activist pledges to fight for all who have been “crushed by the Department of Injustice.”
“To stand among those fighting for real reform and freedom, to be a voice in this movement, reminds me why I refuse to stop speaking out. The fight for justice is far from over.” In a powerful message posted for her 2.8 million Instagram followers, Savannah Chrisley commemorated her recent trip to Washington D.C., where she made her way through the Conservative Political Action Conference as a Senior Fellow for the Nolan Center for Criminal Justice.
Also during her D.C. visit, the reality TV personality, influencer and activist dined in the West Wing of the White House, the same hallowed halls where President Donald Trump’s Oval Office resides. “If you had told me years ago that I would be here, I wouldn’t have believed you. But God’s plans are bigger than our own,” she continued. “Sometimes, you have to force your way into rooms where you don’t ‘belong’….because if you’re fighting for what’s right, you absolutely do.”
Many will know Chrisley first from her beloved role on Chrisley Knows Best, a wildly popular reality show following the well-heeled Chrisley family—headed by her real estate tycoon father Todd Chrisley and mother Julie Chrisley—that was broadcast on USA Network for 10 seasons and 204 episodes from 2014 to 2023. As a former beauty pageant competitor who won the Miss Tennessee Teen USA title in 2016 and placed in the top 15 at Miss Teen USA 2016, all while maintaining an immaculate report card and an endearingly mischievous air, Chrisley quickly became a fan favorite.
But the reality star was forced to grow up in a big way when her parents, along with their accountant, were found guilty in 2022 of conspiring to defraud banks and the IRS. Per Today, Todd was sentenced to 12 years in prison and Julie was sentenced to seven years, putting the family’s small-screen career on indefinite hiatus. At just 26 years old, Chrisley made the admirable decision to leave a frontrunning position on Fox’s military-inspired reality show Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test to take over guardianship of siblings Chloe, who was 10 at the time, and Grayson, who was 17. With her brother and sister safe by her side, Chrisley didn’t simply stand down and accept her parents’ fate—she began fighting back, both on her parents’ behalf and for all who have been mistreated under the law.
“Probably a year after my parents left, I just became very outspoken, because I knew nothing about our criminal justice system,” she said in a recent interview with People. “I honestly thought bad people go to prison. That’s what I thought. And that is so far from the truth.” More specifically, Chrisley became fiercely critical of what she describes as the “inhumane” treatment of her parents under incarceration. On a July 2023 episode of the Unlocked with Savannah Chrisley podcast, which began releasing weekly installments shortly before her parents’ sentencing, she and her older brother, Chase, detailed the “nightmare” scenario that their folks are being forced to endure.
“Now they both have no air conditioning,” Chase said. “They are both in states where it gets to be 100-plus degrees, and there’s no air conditioning.” Meanwhile, Savannah said her mom’s cell is teeming with snakes “just casually slithering on the floor in front of her.” She added, “There are some things that are gonna come to light that are disgusting. It will leave people speechless about the things that go on in these facilities, and I’m ready for that day to come.”
Though her parents continue to deny all wrongdoing and fight for freedom, their claimed mistreatment continues. In a new interview with People, Chrisley revealed that her parents “don’t get to speak. It’s been two years, and they haven’t spoken a word to each other. They’ve been together almost 30 years, and they’ve never gone a day in their life without being with one another. That’s been a challenge. That should never happen.”
In July 2024, Chrisley took her rightful grievances from the podcast studio all the way to the Republican National Convention’s main stage, where she delivered a riveting speech that included an endorsement of President Trump and a denunciation of the Department of Justice, which she called a “broken system.”
“72600019, and 72601019. These may be just numbers to you, but to me, they’re my whole heart. These numbers are my parents’ identification numbers in our federal prison system,” she told the crowd before accusing the Biden administration of weaponizing the Department of Justice to “punish their enemies.”
“There should be no immunity,” she said. “We need to expose the Democrats’ corruption and, better yet, the Biden family’s corruption. And guess what? I know just the man for that job. Donald J. Trump has only one conviction that matters, and that is his conviction to make America great again.”
Chrisley, too, has stood by her convictions, even if they’ve gotten in the way of lucrative opportunities. As she grows the scope and influence of her podcast, she has been told that advertisers won’t approach anything that could be characterized as conservative in nature. “That was a tough thing for me because once again….do I stand for what I believe in, or do I feed my family,” she told People. “Which one? We should never live in a world where your job is in jeopardy because of [a] difference of beliefs.”
Despite the possible bias in the podcast realm, Chrisley recently revealed that she’s in talks with a “very well-known, big production company” to create a show that’s already generated serious interest from a major network. Tentatively, shooting could begin in the coming weeks before an August 11 premiere date marks her return to television. But first and foremost, Chrisley remains a staunch advocate for prison reform. As she emphatically stated in the aforementioned Instagram post, “I will never stop fighting for my parents. I will never stop fighting for the millions of others crushed by the Department of Injustice. We will not be silenced.”