Entrepreneurship after Pr*son: Challenges, Insights and Opportunities

What is it like to start a business after serving time in Pr*son? Entrepreneurship is increasingly being taught both within Pr*son systems and afterwards through re-entry programs, as having a felony and history of incarceration can make it difficult to find employment once released. Yet, little is known about how the experience of being convicted of a crime and subsequent imprisonment impacts the ability to start and operate a business. This is especially pertinent for long-time offenders who spend five or more years in Pr*son. For this research, we build upon the challenge-based model of entrepreneurship (Miller and Le Breton-Miller, 2017) to explore the adaptive requirements that emerge from being in Pr*son and how these adaptive requirements can both help and hinder the entrepreneurial process once released. This will allow us to then further explore what resources and support are most beneficial when pursuing entrepreneurship after Pr*son. Finally, we move beyond a sole focus on economic implications to explore how the entrepreneurial process affects previously incarcerated individuals in other ways related to hope and wellbeing. The presentation will cover early findings of pilot interviews and the literature review.

Host or Publisher Cal Poly College of Liberal Arts