A social entrepreneurship idea

It was in January 2016 when Ashoka India, a network of social entrepreneurs, conducted a Changemaker week at St. Joseph's College, Bangalore (now St. Joseph's University ). It was a week-long event at my alma mater, where students and professors like were involved in organising and volunteering.

Towards the end of the week, there was a competition for an entrepreneural idea pitch (elevator pitch) in the domain of social entrepreneurship. The terms were such that contestants would be given 15 minutes to pitch and present their idea and the best three would be awarded a cash prize and an invitation to build on their idea further, in collaboration with Ashoka India. I decided to participate in this event.

My topic for the idea pitch was to build a social enterprise for minimizing the communication and awareness gap of released prisoners. It is broadly known that when a person commits a crime and is proven guilty in the court of law, they can be charged fines and also be sentenced to serve time in prison. Attention is given to the entry into prison and life in prison. But, what about life after serving prison sentence? (Especially, long-term sentence)

Prisoners service time under judicial custody for weeks, months, years and even decades. Outside of prison, techonolical and social changes take place rapidly, in the form of innovations, new buildings, social nuances, colloquial language terms, accepted social lingo, gadgets, new regulations and so on. There is a clear gap of communication and general awareness between a released prisoner and an average individual.

From a Dial-up internet connection to Ethernet and from Ethernet to WiFi in a matter of a few years. The released prisoner is completed bereft of the knowledge of this advancement which may lead to questions and difficulties. Infrastructural changes may lead to dislocation of places the released prisoner once knew. An old hangout the prisoner might have frequented before being jailed may no longer exist. New roads and flyover may also have come in place. Releasing prisoners directly into society under such circumstances might lead to frustration. This could further lead to health issues, more crime and even suicide attempts.

My motive behind the idea was that a person should not live a life of punishment after being released from a place of punishment, for the same crime. This motive was backed by the popular legal tenet of double jeopardy, the philosophy of which is along similar lines. Double jeopardy is a legal concept that forbids a person from being tried again on the same charges in the same case following a legitimate conviction (or acquittal).

My idea was to start a social entreprise to train individuals (social work & psychology graduates or other interested people) to hold sessions for released prisoners, post release. Experts could be hired from the fields of General Studies, Sociology, Technology, Journalism & Media, etc. to provide content for the sessions.

The idea would directly benefit the released prisoners to lead a life without communication and awareness gap after their release from prison so that they could contribute effectively to society. Indirectly, this idea would also help in creating more jobs as trainers, content providers and others would be requred to contribute and conduct the sessions. Society would benefit in general as the trained, released prisoners would be less likely to commit crimes after the sessions.