Entrepreneurship: a divergent pathway out of crime?
ROBERT H. SMITH · Open Access Institutional Repository at Robert Gordon University (Robert Gordon University) · 2009
This chapter illustrates how knowledge of entrepreneurship can be used as a diversionary mechanism to divert and lead offenders out of crime. Indeed, entrepreneurship offers such a divergent pathway but paradoxically entrepreneurship being amoral can be used to achieve both good and bad ends. Nevertheless, entrepreneurship as a life theme pervades society and the actions of individuals within them. The chapter begins by discussing the links between entrepreneurship and crime and in particular the hidden links between crime “ dyslexia “ and entrepreneurship. Building upon this theoretical foundation by using examples and case studies from across the globe, this chapter demonstrates how social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education is already making a contribution to the Criminal Justice Systems in their respective countries. These examples and other themes developed within the chapter are worked into a tentative model which can be used by those in such Criminal Justice Systems to divert even more offenders away from a debilitating life of crime.