The vast majority of prison ministries focus on evangelism and engage with inmates much as they would with any other mission project. The Houston-based Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP), which receives no state funding, is receiving national and international accolades for its unique integration of entrepreneurial skills and character transformation. Prisoners who come to the program are treated much as a blacksmith takes a “crude, formless, and totally moldable” piece of metal and turns it into something useful, even beautiful. (See related feature story in this issue, Prison Entrepreneurs: From Shark Tank to Redemption.)
Bert Smith has been actively involved in PEP since 2005 and CEO since 2010. Smith has a business background in power plant engineering and energy technology. He holds an AB in economics from Princeton University and a Juris Doctor from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. He recently spoke with Ray Nothstine during a “pitch day” event for prisoners at the Cleveland Correctional Center in Cleveland, Texas.
R&L: Any time we read about the prison industry, we are told about record numbers of incarcerated Americans. Why do you think so many Americans are in prison? And why do the numbers seem to only increase?
Bert Smith: A little over two million are incarcerated, and about five million are in some other way entangled in the criminal justice system. The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, which is very distressing to me. As to why that’s the case, there are several possible reasons.
Let me start by saying there’s a lot of discussion recently about excess criminalization. Starting back in the 1980s through maybe the 1990s, many crimes weren’t considered criminal or weren’t involved with charges that resulted in felonies. Combine that with the rise in minimum sentencing policies. I know those things may have contributed to the higher rates of incarceration and the situation we have today, but I don’t want to focus on that. I believe that there are deeper reasons. One is the failure of fathers in the United States.
I'd estimate that about 80 to 90 percent of the guys that PEP serves either didn't know their father or wish they hadn’t. I don’t know if those percentages are exact, but I’m sure it’s not far off. When a boy grows up in a vacuum like that, not knowing his father or wishing he didn’t know his father, he will feel alienated. He will feel lonely. He will feel insignificant. There will be a hole in his soul. He will be angry and scared. And he's going to seek out affirmation or medication or both from sources that are not going to prosper him, but harm him. That will obviously suppress the talents God embedded in him to flourish. I believe men of every socioeconomic level need to man up. All of us. This is the main reason why PEP includes a series called The Quest for Authentic Manhood, developed by Pastor Robert Lewis out of Little Rock, Arkansas. Every one of the PEP guys goes through it. And we bring in volunteers to sit and work through this study alongside the men. The feedback I get from them is tremendous. It is a biblical perspective on Molding Men, Shaping Futures: An Interview with Bert Smith Inmates at Cleveland Correctional Center, Cleveland, TX. what it means to be a real man in the 21st century. We don’t hear enough of that kind of truth. I'm hoping in some small way to begin to change the outcomes of the criminal justice system by changing the perspective and the hearts of these men. We hope through that there will be a powerful ripple effect for their sons and grandsons.
I would say another reason for this increase in incarceration that we’ve experienced over the last 25 years is a lack of education. The men who wind up in prison are overwhelmingly undereducated. As a result of that, they have limited opportunity. And that fact often results in poor decision-making skills. I really doubt that this is entirely the fault of our school systems. Parents and other family members have to bear a big portion of the blame for not setting, modeling, and enforcing appropriate educational expectations.
A third reason may be economics. With limited legitimate legal opportunity through education and even less through family and personal connections, the possibility for even the hope of success is very limited. With no hope down one path, we’re more likely to walk down another path, even if we know that it is more dangerous or morally wrong. At PEP, we do not by any means encourage our men to look for excuses, but in trying to answer your question, I have to put economic circumstances up there as a critical factor.
What reforms do we desperately need in the prison system today?
We don’t get involved much on the policy front, but from my business experience I know that you usually get the results that you incentivize. I’m not aware of any penal system that really incentivizes the operators based on the success or failure of the inmates that leave prison. We need to identify the metrics and correctly identify who gets rewarded. The system is geared toward punishment and lock up. We are not incentivizing rehabilitation and successful reentry. You get a guy out and he does well, but there is no reward for those who helped him succeed. I think that would be a radical change in the way we pay for and oversee the prison industry. We can and should do this in private and state-run facilities.
What can prison ministries do better, and why does PEP receive so much attention?
I believe PEP is successful partly because we’re non-conventional. For most traditional prison ministries, the core mission is Christian evangelism and conversion to make disciples of Christ. That’s wonderful, but that is not the primary mission of PEP. The board and staff of PEP and most of our volunteers are committed Christians, but we choose to show God’s love through service, to empower inmates for vocational and business success. We often try to model St. Francis of Assisi’s advice: “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”
We don’t do a lot of preaching, and some people recognize that more than others. It lowers the barriers and expectations for people to be involved. It allows the Spirit to do more work. Everybody is not here for a faith-based ministry. Many of them are, of course, Christians, so they have an extra layer to their engagement. A lot of PEP’s success stems from engaging the community outside of the prison. The person-to-person connection between inmates and business leaders is essential.
How has the involvement been with the business community in helping with the venture panels? What is the draw?
The opportunity to make a difference in the life of another person is the draw. There are millions of people in the world who are eager to serve with no expectation of a tangible reward. People love to be a part of a positive outcome that is much bigger than themselves.
I talked to a few inmates who said that their perception of the program changed after enrolling. Some initially felt they might be getting a handout and obviously that is a lot different from what PEP is about. Is this a common occurrence, and do you often see an evolution in what inmates expect from PEP?
Sure. It is not at all uncommon for guys to have a misunderstanding about what PEP really is intended to provide—being a hand up, rather than a handout. When they first get a postcard that basically says, “So, you want to be an entrepreneur?” their immediate thought, in some cases, leans towards entrepreneurs who are fabulously wealthy. It’s almost like they think they’re being asked, “Do you want to be a millionaire?” They think it’s going to be all about business and how to become not a millionaire, but a billionaire. But that’s not the case. And what they find out pretty quickly is that our program is about far more than business. It really has much greater emphasis on both character assessment and development, rather than on business.
It's really much more about how their words and actions reveal their heart and contribute either to building positive relationships or to the destruction of relationships.
We use business as the context within which to explore all of that and to identify the character traits they have that are either contributing to or limiting their growth as a person and, therefore, as a businessperson.
What is the biggest challenge for you as CEO leading this program, and what’s the biggest challenge you see in the next few years?
My biggest challenge personally has been remaining faithful, maintaining a Christ-centered view and remaining Spirit-dependent. I say this, I hope, without any false humility. I am trying to remain a truly humble servant in all that that entails.
“We’re called to respond to need where we see it with whatever we have, to move toward the fray, rather than backing away from it.“
We’re not a traditional faith-based ministry, where evangelism is obvious and is the core of our mission. But that’s true for me, and it’s true for many of the people who are on staff and many of our volunteers. PEP is really hard work. It’s difficult emotionally, and it’s even hard physically at times, just because we’re such a high-touch organization requiring long hours. While I believe that what we are doing is God’s work and that all things are possible through Him, whether that’s sustainable sources of funding or sustainable sources of reliable volunteers, whatever the need is, the challenge for me is just not to forget that God is in control. If I can keep focused on that personally, I know I’ll be fine and that PEP will benefit. But what is the biggest challenge for me as CEO? I actually don’t believe it is chasing the money or chasing the people; it’s just maintaining that focus and that mindset.
Is there anything concrete you can point to in terms of how this program has brought about a spiritual change in you?
I made a decision after I’d gone through law school and had been working for a couple of years that I wanted to become much more injust because we’rejust because we’retentional as a Christian. It has been a gradual process of deepening my understanding of God.
When I started volunteering for PEP about 10 years ago, I began to see a new possibility of serving God by integrating my business experience into the lives of these men who have so little in the way of experience. That was just very exciting. I volunteered for about five years and then five years ago was given the opportunity to be a part of the leadership.
One of the things I’ve realized in this part of my work and my journey is that, obviously, none of us are perfect, and we’re not called to be perfect in what we do to serve. I’m called to be present. I have been broken many times in life and remain broken, but that’s not the point. We’re called to respond to need where we see it with whatever we have, to move toward the fray, rather than backing away from it.
We have a lot of CEOs and business leaders who read Religion & Liberty. Speaking to that audience, why should somebody give their time and resources to these inmates and the PEP program?
I think people are motivated more by mission than by money. I think that’s been shown to be true in a number of different contexts. And we know for a fact that PEP’s mission is profound. I think we can also show that our impacts are phenomenal, multi-generational, and far-reaching. A Baylor University study affirmed the low recidivism and high employment rates of our graduates, and estimates the social return on investment to donors’ cash investments to be 340 percent. I’ve done volunteering for other non-profits over the last 25 years. I’ve sat on foundation boards and been on church mission teams and had a fair amount of exposure to a lot of different non-profits. I don’t know very many that can even calculate a return on investment, much less demonstrate one of that magnitude. And that’s just on the measurable financial outcomes from our activity. It does not capture the extraordinary non-financial benefits of restoring family relationships in one household at a time, improving communities that are desperate for light.
Entrepreneurs and most business people generally are very interested in outcomes. They’re very interested in impact. It’s extraordinarily appealing and rewarding for a seasoned businessperson to be able to use what God has given to them in the way of meaningful and successful business life experiences and invest those experiences into the lives of our men and then see these profound impacts and know that their work and their money is having tremendous results. That’s the feedback we get from donors and volunteers routinely and repetitively. So I think we’re hitting the mark there.
