A Conservative Perspective on Former Inmate Re-entry
By HHR | July 12th, 2010 | Category: Featured, Opinion/Reviews | 13 comments
By Vanessa Jean Louis
A few weeks ago, I met an ex-convict on my way home from a meeting with a photographer. We’ll call him “Jason”. While I was parked at the stoplight, I heard Jason talking to someone on the corner. He said, “I just got out of jail today man! I’m so happy to be out after serving 10 years!” The journalist in me screamed, “Hey, um, I want to ask you some questions. Stay right where you are!”
After parking my car, we went into a pizza restaurant. Jason told me he was arrested 10 years ago after getting caught with his friend who was selling drugs. I asked him what his plans were now that he is out, and he said he is working on finding employment since he has temporary housing. While serving time, he worked in the kitchen and told me he is an aspiring cook. I warned him how difficult it would be for him to find employment because of the current economic climate. I also told him not to get discouraged because of the stigma associated with being an ex-convict.
He smiled and said, “I know. I’m so happy to be out that I’ll do whatever it takes to make it and not go back into prison.” I suggested that he be realistic and find employment, but eventually work towards opening his own restaurant since he had such a proclivity for culinary arts. He hadn’t eaten all day so I bought him pizza, gave him 20 dollars, and I thanked him for sharing his time with me.
Currently, approximately 2 out of every 3 former inmates return’ to prison within three years of release. Helping inmates find and sustain employment immediately after release diminishes their chances of recidivism. Working towards a reduction in recidivism is important because keeping offenders from re-entering the penal system means less crime and less tax dollars (which can be saved and/or reinvested by the tax payer).
Most of the aid that offenders receive are through public funds from the federal government and philanthropic organizations which donate monies to non-profits and state agencies to help defray re-entry costs. Ex-convicts are typically placed into low-wage jobs and often quit due to the patience required for delayed gratification through legal work and/or lack of familial support.
While public-private dollars are spent on employability skills and other social skills needed to rehabilitate them into productive civilian life, not enough emphasis is placed on entrepreneurship skills (self-employment). Unbeknownst to many of them, convicts who enter the penal system for dealing drugs procure many transferable business skills. By proxy they learn concepts such as: monopoly, market competition, oligopoly, marketing, re-investment, and dividend payments. In order to reduce recidivism, emphases should be placed on ex-convicts channeling those same skills towards legal activities.
State-sponsored re-entry programs typically don’t have information on investment skills, emerging markets, and venture capitalist firms for small business development. If more Ex-convicts became business owners, we have an additional tax base and potential mentorship of others who are re-entering civilian life. Former convicts would also become cognizant of how high crime rates affect local/state taxes (thus derailing their chances of committing and/or abetting criminals), and entrepreneurship would also spur economic activity because these businesses would potentially be in or around the cities where they reside. An added benefit could also come from these new business owners contracting with the state and local agencies to employ other parolees exiting the penal system.
While I’m fully aware that not every ex-convict is going to be successful at self-employment, I do know that there is indeed human capital locked up in our penal system. Regurgitating textbook conservative talking points means nothing if we aren’t active with alternatives and solutions for the communities we purport to care about. While I’m not certain that state governments have enough resources or the impetus to help with promoting entrepreneurship, this is a task that Urban Conservatives and/or Conservatives with a heart for inner city constituents can spear head.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Vanessa Jean Louis better known as the “afroconservative”, has been working in the inner city as a school counselor for the last several years.She is a self-described “urban conservative” who believes in strong families, school choice vouchers, and fiscal policies that help lift people out of poverty-not perpetuate deleterious cycles of government dependence. Vanessa holds a Master’s degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University. She is currently working towards a second Master’s Degree in Political Economy.
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Most brothers in my neighborhood fell into serial arrest-incarceration-state supervision, etc. Some didn’t survive the process and others are dying in slow motion as I type.
Neithe part sees them as more than human checker pieces to push around. Admirably, most rentry programs are headed by liberals whose inner city presence hasn’t been contested by conservatives of any color.
As currently branded, more jails and penalties for everything under the sun are prevailing consrvative postures.
The focus shouldn’t be on successful release/reintegration, it should be on not locking them up in the first place. Prison changes people, psychologically, physically, culturaly, economically, it changes them, and it changes them in ways that are far more difficult to overcome than whatever forces drove them to commit a crime in the first place.
We get people coming out of prison who are less attached to the community and their families, better connected to criminals and criminal organizations, less financially able, more mentally disturbed. Prisons breed criminals. The only ones going in should be the worst of the worst, those who we never want back out again. But throwing people in for a few years and then dumping them back out? Disaster.
[...] Hip Hop Republican site takes on a cause that ought to be of huge concern to conservatives: the American prison [...]
You’re right, Brillo.
I worked in a prison for a month as part of a fellowship—not long I know, but when you hear these things from correctional officers themselves, you know its a problem.
You send first-time offenders to prison and they come out as professional criminals.
Its crime college.
To see what Vanessa is describing in action (and 100% privately funded) please visit http://www.pep.org. The Prison Entrepreneurship Program is a privately funded organization that provides inmates with entrepreneurship, business, life skills and character development training. The programs work heavily with legitimate entrepreneurs and business executives. The program has an intensive six month in-prison Business Plan Competition and a full range of post-release services including transitional housing, job development services, continuing education, executive mentoring (both personal and business) and start-up support services. Currently, the program operates exclusively in the Texas prison system.
PEP has encouraging results:
Less than 10% recidivism
98% employment within 90 days
65 new businesses created (out of 620 graduates)
$14 million in estimated income generated from legitimate jobs–$3 million in taxable wages from individuals were were previously tax consumers only
$5 million in eliminated future incarceration costs for every 150 graduates
[...] conservatism watch Posted in Politics, U.S. Politics by riggabyte on July 14, 2010 The Hip Hop Conservative throws a drop into the ocean: While public-private dollars are spent on employability skills and [...]
Wow, did you fake that conversation for this article or what? Was he a robot that always provided every detail to logically fit into an op-ed piece like this?
What an asinine question….
[...] Frum cites a neat article and chimes in on the topic of reforming the prison system: Currently, approximately 2 out of every [...]
[...] Hip Hop Republican throws a drop into the [...]
HHR
It did read a bit managed…. My impressionwas there was some back story that didnt make it to the op ed peice
[...] for Andrew Sullivan, linked yesterday to an article at Hip-Hop Republican entitled “A Conservative Perspective on Former Inmate Re-entry,” by Vanessa Jean Louis: Most of the aid that offenders receive are through public funds from [...]
2007 article about intergrating re-entry with entrpreneurship entitled:
http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/VenturingBeyondtheGates.pdf