Prison Entrepreneurship Program

I became involved with the Prison Entrepreneurship Program after reading a b-​school friends blog entry of his experience with the program working as an Executive Mentor. I was moved by the concept of providing inmates the means to view their release from prison as a true second chance and a way to positively re-​enter society. As the program explains, two-​thirds of released inmates will return to prison within three years. However, those inmates that graduate from this program have a recidivism rate below three percent. From those numbers it is clear that PEP changes people’s lives for the better. These statistics are more easily understood when one attempts to take a look at the world from an inmates’ point of view. Most everyone in the outside world understands that these men committed terrible crimes and deserved to be punished. Yet much fewer probably realize how very scary it is for the inmates to leave prison and re-​enter society. Inmates are released with the clothes on their backs, up to $ 100, a bus ticket and a criminal record. In reality, these men will be repeatedly rejected from their families, potential employers, public housing facilities and even churches. They face a difficult road. PEP provides these men a real opportunity to reintegrate them back into society and to never return to prison. For many of these men, graduating from this program is the greatest accomplishment of their lives.
I have worked with PEP as an Executive Mentor over the last two programs. My duties in this role aren’t many, mainly they are to revise an inmates’ business plan, resume and personal statement as well as perform some online research for his business idea. All told I have done less than 15 hours of work each time, so it is not a huge time commitment. There are many optional events one can participate in also but usually they require you to be in the Dallas– Fort Worth area and I have been unable able to participate so far. I believe this is a worthwhile program which I plan to continue to work with and I would recommend to anyone to join in. For more information, take a look at their website: