Creating entrepreneurship opportunities for returning citizens will generate wealth and opportunity for disadvantaged communities and mitigate recidivism, says the Center for an Urban Future (CUF), a nonprofit New York-based think tank.
In a report released Tuesday, the Center encourages New York City Mayor Adams and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to invest in entrepreneurship initiatives, but support for the policy is still uncertain.
The report titled Starting Up & Staying Out, estimates some 35 percent of formerly incarcerated individuals are unemployed in New York City.
But according to the report, up to 40 percent of the approximately 10,000 New York City residents released from state prisons each year are interested in pursuing entrepreneurship and or self-employment.
However, few leap at it. But the research shows involvement in entrepreneurship made those seeking reentry 33 percent less likely to re-offend.
The report says the lack of support for reentry entrepreneurship on the city and state levels is attributed to the few formerly incarcerated acting on their interests. For example, two of the 50 New York State prisons offer entrepreneurship classes.
Nine of twenty-four state-funded Alternative to Incarceration programs provide former inmates with job training and employment services – but no entrepreneurship training.
Additionally, fewer than five New York City programs are designed to help people transitioning back to their communities to launch their own ventures — none of which receives city or state funding for entrepreneurship training, according to the CUF.
Stephen Jackson, former CEO of Workshop in Business Opportunities, an organization that offers entrepreneurship training to the formerly incarcerated and members of underserved communities, says that those seeking reentry he works with “want freedom. They want to be their own boss. They want to control how their life goes. They want to provide for their family. ”
The CUF study makes several recommendations for Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul to boost support for returning New Yorkers who are seeking to generate income through entrepreneurship, including:
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- A commitment to providing 2,500 formerly incarcerated New Yorkers with entrepreneurship training over the next five years.
- Launching New York City’s first entrepreneurship training program specifically for formerly incarcerated individuals.
- Pass legislation to automatically seal and expunge criminal records, which removes a significant barrier to accessing loans, licenses, and business insurance.
- Expand entrepreneurial education to every correctional facility in New York.
“Formerly incarcerated people who start businesses have a higher income than those that have employment,” says Damon Phillips, former co-director of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School.
“And we know that even those who start a business that doesn’t work out have a higher chance of being employed post-entrepreneurship.”
The full report can be found here: Starting Up & Staying Out | Center for an Urban Future (CUF) (nycfuture.org)
Additional Reading: Congress Needs to Invest in Returning Citizens, by Melissa Mack and Jessica Centeno, The Crime Report, May 23, 2022.
James Van Bramer is Associate Editor of The Crime Report
