You have to love a person who has spent 43 years in a career and when asked ‘When are you retiring’ their response is, ‘When I don’t have anything else to learn’. Sheriff Karl Leonard of Chesterfield, Virginia, is that person.  For his entire career, he’s been a public servant; from a military career to the Chesterfield Police Department to the Pentagon and now the Sheriff of Chesterfield County, and despite all he’s experienced, he continues to understand the human condition and find ways to be progressive to help those under his watch.  His transparency in taking over the Sheriff’s office is refreshing, as he’s the first to admit that there was no Sheriff's instruction book. When his jail was inundated, daily, with locals, addicted to Heroin he trusted his instincts and felt that a higher power was guiding him.  This led to the creation of the HARP program, a peer mentor-run program that over the last eight years has successfully helped 3500 people, overcome not just Heroin but other drug or alcohol addictions. As Sheriff Leonard says, ‘There’s a lot of good people behind bars, and there are bad people too, that deserve to spend their lives there, but that’s a small percentage of incarcerated people, and when you learn about (the good people) and their life and the challenges they grew up in, since birth, these are good people with bad circumstances presented to them…’

The Hustler Files Ep 89 - Believing There Are Good People Behind Bars

Podcasts from all of the local show on WHMP Radio in Northampton, MA. including Talk the Talk with Bill Newman and Buz Eisenberg, The Hustler Files, The Western Mass Business Show, and Panorama.