Venturing beyond the Gates: Facilitating Successful Reentry with Entrepreneurship
Venturing beyond the Gates: Facilitating Successful Reentry with Entrepreneurship
While our nation’s policymakers are beginning to comprehend the importance of employment in the reintegration of people with criminal records, little attention has been paid to the opportunity that entrepreneurship represents to promote self-determination and empowerment. To explore the viability of entrepreneurship as a reentry strategy, we conducted a year-long project funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which culminated in this monograph. Venturing beyond the Gates: Facilitating Successful Reentry with Entrepreneurship includes overviews of the fields of criminal justice, reentry, entrepreneurship, and microenterprise; opportunities represented by bridging these fields; funding opportunities; and profiles of microenterprise programs working with currently and formerly incarcerated individuals. It finds that, for some formerly incarcerated individuals, entrepreneurial training provides an opportunity to capitalize on their talents and skills, become agents of change in their own lives and the lives of their families, and contribute to the vibrancy and health of our communities.