Prison Entrepreneurship Program in Fast Company

Rising Star: Prison Entrepreneurship Program

From: FastCompany.com By: Fast Company staff

Catherine F. Rohr, CEO
Houston, Texas
pep.org

A large percentage of inmates come to prison as seasoned entrepreneurs, having run highly successful enterprises such as drug rings and gangs. What if these influential leaders were provided with the training and resources to establish and run legitimate companies?

The Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) links executives and inmates through entrepreneurial passion, education and mentoring. The program engages the nation's top business and academic talent to constructively redirect inmates' energies by equipping them with values-based entrepreneurial training--enabling them to productively re-enter society.

In three years since inception, PEP has dramatically reduced return-to-prison rates: its graduates' return-to-prison rates are 3.7%, compared to the national average of more than 50%. The program has a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 150%, and has assisted 40 participants in starting their businesses. PEP has recruited 800+ senior level executives and venture capital/private equity professionals who serve as inmates' mentors and business plan judges. Additionally, the program has established affiliations with 12 top-tier MBA programs, including Harvard and Stanford, whose 400+ students serve as weekly advisors for the inmates' business plans. The program's innovative work has won several awards, and has received coverage on NBC Nightly News and in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Entrepreneur Magazine.

PEP's five-year vision includes:

• Growing its budget from $2MM to $15MM
• Graduating 1,000 inmates per year
• Assisting 500 graduates in launching successful businesses
• xpanding staff from 17 to 125 employees

PEP is hiring successful, motivated entrepreneurial-types. Ready to jump ship? Email: recruiting@pep.org

Prison

Here are some excerpts from a new article in Christianity Today.

698,000 inmates were released from prison in the last 12 months. Most will be behind bars again by 2009. How can we keep more from returning?

Some 2.2 million people (one in every 136 U.S. residents) are doing time in prison, according to FBI statistics. Add to that number another 4 million or more on probation, parole, or awaiting trial in local jails. This past year, prison populations grew 4.7 percent—the largest annual growth spurt in nearly ten years.

As prison populations have soared, the number of prisoners who are freed has also increased significantly. Prisons free at least 600,000 each year.

But most freed inmates have few marketable job skills. The lack of a job is a major risk factor for an ex-offender to commit a new crime. Researchers say the repeat-offense rate nationally is stubbornly high, at more than 60 percent.

The Justice Department also recently noted that black men make up 41 percent of all inmates, and Hispanic women are 1.6 times more likely than white women to be imprisoned.

Pat Nolan, head of Justice Fellowship (a PF-affiliate), told CT, "Locking up prisoners without doing anything to change their moral perspective or give them skills to live crime-free when they are released has made us less safe rather than more.

PF's Earley told CT that he believes new approaches are required to attack the chronic problem of repeat offenders. Worship services in prisons are not enough. "What is increasingly needed today," he said, "is a one-on-one relationship and helping them with their life."

Release from prison is when the hard work begins. "The first 60 to 90 days is the real tipping point as to whether they're going to make it or not," said Earley.

You can read the entire article here.