“We’re the most-incarcerated country in the world,” Grammy award-winning musician and criminal justice reform advocate John Legend says on a visit to a group of prisoners in Austin, Texas. Legend and his organization
FreeAmerica are a “part of a movement to help reverse some of the mistakes” in policy that led to that situation.
One of the biggest problems facing our society is how to get prisoners back into society after they have been released and get a second chance at a better life.
To help answer the employment question for former offenders, Legend has sponsored “Unlocked Future,” which supports entrepreneurs who made it out of prison, who are now on a mission to transform their communities with their businesses.
As Legend explained to
Forbes, the idea behind the project was simple. “Let’s not just tell folks to hire formerly incarcerated individuals, but to invest in their ideas,” he shared. Supporting entrepreneurs who, themselves, were hired after coming out of prison, the project hopes to inspire them to back the positive practice.
In conjunction with the start-up incubator New Profit and Bank of America, Legend has helped select two cohorts starting in 2017 who share a troubled past with the law. Participants received a $50,000 grant to pursue their dream of a sustainable, socially focused business. In a video showing Legend’s first meeting with his cohort in 2017, the singer and advocate asked about the challenges of finding work after getting out of correctional facilities.
While 95 percent of prison inmates will at some point be released, the employment situation for them afterward is almost impossible. As a report by the
Congressional Research Service shows, “Compared with the average American, ex-offenders are less educated, less likely to be gainfully employed, and more likely to have a history of mental illness or substance abuse.” There is little question the discrimination they face from prospective employers is a massive hurdle to overcome.
According to entrepreneur Teresa Hodge, “It’s fiscally irresponsible to leave people locked out of opportunity for the rest of their lives.” Despite these business people’s initiative, they received little encouragement from the world at large after leaving prison. Founder of
Clean Decisions, a landscaping, cleaning, and event-planning company that employs former offenders, Will Avila told the group, “I went through 22 job applications and got rejected 22 times.”
The “rejection and hopelessness” Avila experienced made him feel that he might never find honest work, which was incredibly demoralizing for someone who wanted to turn his life around. Other entrepreneurs talked about working for below minimum wage after coming out of jail, because as one said, he “couldn’t afford not to be exploited.”
The people in the first cohort noted that many people in America’s prisons want a different kind of future and have things they can contribute. Dirk Van Zelzen, who created the
Prison Scholar Fund to create academic opportunities for formerly incarcerated people, explained that many people in prison are “already are entrepreneurs,” ironically. “Give them some business training, an ethics course, and just guide them in a different direction,” he adds.
Former inmates who don’t get the chance to rehabilitate successfully increases the odds that they will re-offend and end up back in prison. According to the
National Institute of Justice, statistics from 2014 showed that “within three years of release, about two-thirds (67.8 percent) of released prisoners were rearrested. Within five years of release, about three-quarters (76.6 percent) of released prisoners were rearrested.”
Rather than seeing this massive population as a liability, entrepreneur Marcus Bullock, who created the app
Flikshop for friends and family to stay in touch with their loved ones behind bars, says that they are ready to make a difference. “The majority of people coming out of these cells, when you ask them ‘What is that you want to do?’ more times than not you are going to find that they will say ‘I want to help,’” he explains.
Legend told
Forbes, “If we want the full human potential that is contained in our communities to be maximized, we need to include formerly incarcerated people in conversations around hiring and how we develop the workforce.” It’s not just a question of desperately needed second chances; it’s about creating a great opportunity for the benefit of whole communities.
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