LANCASTER — The first prison inmates to graduate from an Ohio State University entrepreneurship course have developed plans for a variety of business startups, including a food truck specializing in chicken wings, an upscale barbershop serving craft beer and a clothing store for millennial men who want a unique style.
The Ohio Prison Entrepreneurship Program itself is a startup. Organizers hope to continue and expand it.
The program is intended to provide inmates with business skills that will help them reintegrate into society when they are released.
Started this year as a pilot project at the Southeastern Correctional Institution outside Lancaster, the program is a collaboration between the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Ohio State's Fisher College of Business.
Volunteer faculty and students from the business college, plus other volunteers, developed the curriculum and materials, and recently wrapped up teaching a 14-week course at Southeastern Correctional. They plan to offer the course again next year at that prison, and also provide a condensed, four-week course to inmates at the Franklin County jail, said Paul Reeder, the center's executive director.
A $30,000 grant approved by the Columbus City Council last year for offender re-entry programs has provided funding for the pilot project at the state prison and the upcoming course at the Franklin County jail, scheduled to launch in January, Reeder said.
Nineteen prison inmates who took the course marked their graduation by pitching their business plans to a three-member panel of community business experts on Nov. 15 — just like on "Shark Tank," the television reality show featuring aspiring entrepreneurs who present ideas to business tycoons.
Fisher College of Business Dean Anil Makhija; Will Burris, the founder and CEO of virtual-reality technology company Immersive.is; and Ohio State student entrepreneur David Butcher, who created the food-truck business Flyby BBQ, critiqued the business plans and asked follow-up questions of the men, such as: Who's your target market? Who's your competition? What distinguishes your startup from other businesses?
"I thought it was great," Warden Brian Cook said of the program. "It's a win for the students who developed the curriculum and presented it and a win for the guys who took the program. They leave here with a business plan. They learn about the pitfalls they face starting a new business and being an ex-offender."
The hope is that the program will help reduce recidivism rates in a crowded prison system, where each inmate costs the state about $26,000 a year to house, said Jason Dolin, a former Fairfield County assistant prosecutor who was among the teachers.
"We want to change them from tax-takers to tax-makers," Dolin said.
Dolin had been teaching civil law classes to prison inmates for the past few years when he found that many were most interested in how to start a business. That morphed into a short course that he developed and taught at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville and the Correctional Reception Center in Orient. Then Dolin connected with Reeder, and the business faculty and students got involved in developing the 14-week course that debuted at Southeastern Correctional.
The program is loosely modeled on the Texas-based Prison Entrepreneurship Program, Dolin said. That program, operating since 2004, has graduated more than 1,450 students from Texas prisons and has a 7 percent recidivism rate, compared with the national average of 50 percent, according to organizers.
Billy Joe Caudill said he was grateful that the university's business college faculty and students were willing to come to the prison to teach him and the other inmates the skills they need to succeed. Besides learning business skills, Caudill said, the weekly classes provided him and the other men a safe space to share their dreams without being mocked.
Caudill, 49 and from Lancaster, is a self-described foodie. He hopes to launch The Chicken Champ Food Truck, specializing in wings, when he completes his sentence for robbery and other crimes. His scheduled release isn't until 2024, but he is eligible for early release and hopes to get out as soon as next year.
Troy Montgomery, 37, of Cincinnati, a licensed barber imprisoned for drug trafficking, hopes to cut hair and offer manicures, pedicures and other services, plus craft beer, at his boutique shop Innovators Lifestyle. He is scheduled for release in 2020, but eligible for early release next year.
"Each of us had an idea," Montgomery said, "and the program gave us the tools and inspiration to further our passion. It gave us a map to how to organize it. This isn't a pipe dream. This is serious business. It was like being in school, like being an Ohio State student."
mlane@dispatch.com
@MaryBethLane1
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