Findings

Congress finds that— (1) according to the Department of Justice, every year, around 600,000 individuals are released from prison and return home to their communities, and almost 77 percent of those individuals will reoffend within 5 years; (2) according to the Brookings Institution, an estimated 48.5 percent of formerly incarcerated individuals will remain unemployed or earn a negligible income for a period of 1 year post-incarceration, increasing the risk for recidivism; (3) according to the Florida State University Institute for Justice Research and Development, formerly incarcerated individuals see a reduction in earnings of 25 percent since criminal records make it difficult to find stable employment; (4) self-employment can provide economic stability for those who are otherwise locked out of the labor market; and (5) according to a paper entitled Entrepreneurship as a Response to Labor Market Discrimination for Formerly Incarcerated People — (A) the average individual without a criminal record has a 7.09 percent likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur, but justice-impacted individuals were found to be more than 50 percent likely to choose entrepreneurship with a 12.49 percent likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur; (B) entrepreneurship reduces the likelihood of recidivism by 5.3 percent, which was a 32.5 percent decrease from average recidivism rates for regular employees who have been previously incarcerated; and (C) formerly incarcerated individuals who choose entrepreneurship make $2,700 more annually than formerly incarcerated employees and that the income gap between formerly incarcerated entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs with no criminal record was 38 percent lower than the income gap between formerly incarcerated employees and employees with no criminal record.