From the Fraser Valley Centre for Social Enterprise:

Supported in our work by Coast Capital Savings, the Cooperative Development Initiative, and WED, we've been working for nearly four years to create and have now ratified a policy piece at Mountain Institution in Agassiz BC that will enable federal inmates to launch and operate businesses while incarcerated.

This piece, under the leadership of Acting Warden Michael Boileau, was ratified last week. It is called the Standing Order for Inmate-Operated Business.

Upon release from prison, most inmates find that their criminal record acts as a barrier to finding employment. Some of these individuals have artistic or other skills that lend themselves to entrepreneurial endeavour.

While incarcerated, individuals have time, and basic needs of shelter, food, and clothing provided. Upon release, these resources are no longer at their disposal. During the period of incarceration, inmates have a golden opportunity to lay down healthy plans for their future.

Offering inmates another option to legitimate self-sufficiency upon release will reduce recidivism and reliance on social assistance. In the long run, such programming, if supported by staff and introduced to inmates with an authentic desire to enable entrepreneurship, will save corrections and welfare costs, add to the vibrancy and safety of communities, and increase the self- esteem of many.

The benchmark Correctional Services of Canada (CSC) report, Implementing the Life Line Concept: Report of the Task Force on Long-Term Offenders (1998) strongly suggests that inmate-operated business be encouraged as a way to create meaningful work in prison, and enable a possibility for making smart choices upon release through equipping inmates with practical vocational skills, and positive opportunities for independent decision-making.

Although changes have been made to the document since its first iteration in 2004, the initial draft of the Inmate-Operating Standing Order was created with the collaboration of interested inmates at Mountain Institution. Their assistance in educating us with respect to institutional realities, relevant CSC policy, and the language of the environment was integral to the development of the document that now stands as sanctioned operating procedure.

On a related front:

Mountain Institution, under the same leadership, has introduced a new piece of hobby policy that will flow inmate sales of art to correctional staff through InsideArt Cooperative, an arts cooperative whose majority of ownership rests with inmates.

The coming months will see the FVCSE busy developing the systemic framework that will allow this to happen. It is our hope that the system can then be replicated at other federal prisons within the province and possibly beyond. We are grateful to Coast Capital Savings for supporting this work.

The FVCSE is also hard at work, with support from a grant from the Vancity Community Foundation, to develop a feasibility study with the Continued Re- Integration Support Society (CRISS) that examines a social enterprise to offer training and employment opportunities for those re- entering the community from federal prisons, coupled with a housing component.

Kate Collins, founder of CRISS, is skilled in the areas of inmate employment and vocational assessments, and lifeskills training for inmates, among other talents.

Together, we'll be exploring the feasibility of a café / art gallery with supportive housing for some of its workers.

For more information on the Fraser Valley Centre for Social Enterprise, click here.