Solutions to Post-Incarceration Employment and Entrepreneurship: The Role of Businesses and Universities
Friday, April 22, 2016
8:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
What can businesses and universities do to promote the successful reentry of people returning home from prisons and jails? There is an increasing awareness that successful reentry improves the social, economic, and moral well-being of our society. Central to this awareness is an acknowledgment that effective education, employment, and entrepreneurial opportunities allow formerly incarcerated people both to advance themselves and our nation. However, a focus on the critical roles played by businesses and universities is often absent from discussions about solutions.
This forum—a joint effort by the Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change at Columbia Business School and the Columbia University Center for Justice — is an unprecedented undertaking to address these critical issues. We will convene scholars, policy-makers, nonprofits, business leaders, and people directly affected by incarceration to better understand key ways that businesses and universities can bolster successful reentry.
Executive directors who would like to attend future forums can contact [email protected].
Agenda
8:00–8:30 a.m.
Breakfast and Registration
8:30–8:45 a.m.
Welcome and Introductions
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8:45–9:45 a.m.
Keynote Speaker
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9:45–10:45 a.m.
Academic Insights
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10:45–11:15 a.m.
Coffee Break
11:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
Keynote Speaker
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12:15–1:45 p.m.
Working Lunch: Round table Discussions
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1:45–2:45 p.m.
Business Insights
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2:45–3:45 p.m.
Community and Government Insights
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3:45–4:00 p.m.
Afternoon Break
4:00–4:30 p.m.
Putting the Pieces Together
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4:30–4:45 p.m.
Closing Remarks
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References and Links Provided by Speakers
Ifeoma Ajunwa
- The Modern Day Scarlet Letter, Fordham Law Review and Columbia Public Law Research Paper
Lynn Allen
- Releasing confidence: prison entrepreneurship programs offer path, San Francisco Chronicle
- Female prisoners in Calif. prep for life outside with Autodesk certificate, USA Today
- Prison program trains female felons for professional careers, KCRA-TV (NBC, Sacramento)
- Women Behind Bars Getting Help Building Technical Skills To Find A Job, KOVR-TV (CBS, Sacramento)
Gregory Fairchild
- Second Chances: Darden’s Fairchild Launches Prison Entrepreneurship Program
- Interviews with Volunteers from Class of 2014 on their experiences in the program
- Prisoners with an eye for profit learn lessons from behind bars, Financial Times
- Darden Discoveries: From Inmates to Entrepreneurs
Devah Pager
- The Mark of a Criminal Record, American Journal of Sociology
- Race a Factor in Job Offers for Ex-Convicts, New York Times
- Sequencing Disadvantage: Barriers to Employment Facing Young Black and White Men with Criminal Records, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences
- Race at Work: Realities of Race and Criminal Record in the New York City Job Market, Report prepared for the 50th Anniversary of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
- Episode 697: Help Wanted, Planet Money podcast
Michael Stoll
- Perceived Criminality, Criminal Background Checks, and the Racial Hiring Practices of Employers, Journal of Law and Economics
- The Effect Of Criminal Background Checks On Hiring Ex-Offenders, Criminology & Public Policy
Jeremy Travis
- But They All Come Back: Rethinking Prisoner Reentry, National Institute of Justice
Curated Articles from the Marshall Project (editor-in-chief, Bill Keller)
- Start Me Up: Is entrepreneurship the way from prison to prosperity?
- 11 People who Used to Be in Jail—but are now changing the World. Every Hero has a past.
- Café momentum Gives Second Chance to Former Juvenile Offenders. This innovative program aims to take formerly incarcerated youth out of the cycle of crime.
- From Life in Prison to a New Life in San Francisco Tech Scene, Huffington Post
Other References
- Bruce Western and Becky Pettit, Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration
- Jeffery Morenoff and David J. Harding, Incarceration, Prisoner Reentry, and Communities
- StartUp Podcast: Happy Ending, and From the Cell to the Sell explores Coss Marte's story on his path from felon to founder, and how he thinks about hiring for his business.
- Research on Reentry and Employment collated by the National Institute of Justice.