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Training inmates to become legitimate entrepreneurs

The Washington Times has an update on Catherine Rohr, the woman who quit her Wall Street job and now helps turn prisoners into businessmen. (We first mentioned her in a post last summer.)

In 2004, while helping out with a Prison Fellowship outreach at a Texas prison, it occurred to Ms. Rohr that "the very entrepreneurial skills that landed these drug dealers and thieves in prison might be the very thing that could help them get back on the right track," according to the Times.

[S]he secured permission from the Texas Department of Corrections to launch the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP), where murderers, burglars and drug lords are given the chance to become businessmen....

In five years, the program has graduated more than 400 prisoners. Ninety-eight percent have landed steady jobs within four weeks of release, most making at least $11 per hour. Fifty-eight have started their own businesses, ranging from T-shirt printing to software development.

PEP now has nearly 1,500 volunteers involved in training, including more than 1,000 business executives and 450 MBA students from 24 schools.

Many graduates [from the PEP program] find well-paying jobs, and several become the entrepreneurs they dreamed they would be. While more than half of the nation´s prisoners are rearrested within three years, PEP's recidivism rate is less than 10 percent.

The Times story is a welcome reminder in a world of bad news that good things are happening too.

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