It's a business that operates in a multibillion dollar market. It's a product that has intense customer loyalty. It's run with a management style that gets results. It's the business of drug trafficking.
Those involved may be criminals, but they are hardened entrepreneurs. They know the intangibles of business as well as any corporate executive. They understand the dynamics of competition, how to be profitable and even risk management. They have what many students at Mays Business School will take years in the job market to learn: savvy street smarts.
Each year, nearly 600,000 inmates are released from incarceration nationwide. Many are former members or ring leaders of drug-oriented crime, though others may be from gangs, an equally business-like background. It's expected that many will go back to their highly profitable businesses. Of these 600,000, it is estimated that two-thirds will return within three years.
A small group of students in the Mays Business School of Texas A&M have chosen to take up the cause. This week, students will help fundraising efforts for the Prison Entrepreneur Program. Tables staffed by students like Aaron Wechter, a sophomore accounting major, will be in Wehner. "I think it's a cool way to give guys who made a mistake a second chance," he said.A&M students will raise money until Friday for the program. The proceeds will go toward clothing, toiletries and other necessities given to PEP graduates.
"Our goal of PEP Awareness Week is to raise awareness and funds for the Prison Entrepreneurship Program," said Valerie Johnson, the president of PEP and a sophomore accounting major.
PEP wants to harness this potential while simultaneously ending the cycle of prison into which many inmates find themselves falling, Johnson said. A rigorous application process, which includes a 23-page application followed by four exams and at least 20 interviews, is required. Once accepted, the inmates go through an intensive in-prison program, a business plan competition and a formal graduation before beginning the process of reintegration.
The program helps inmates with job placement, housing arrangements, acquiring business-appropriate clothing and receiving medical care from doctors who volunteer their services.
The PEP boasts a 98 percent employment rate. "I came to PEP thinking that someone was going to teach me to make a million," said an inmate who participated in the program. "Instead, someone taught me to be human. That's the best lesson I've learned."
The program focuses on not just harnessing business-oriented talents, but helping inmates reintegrate into society as product members. Upon seeing the program at work for the first time, Houston executive John Rebeles told the Wall Street Journal, "This program has done more for me than it has for the prisoners. It's restored my faith in humanity."
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