When you hit the streets after an eight-year stretch in prison and find no one wants to hire you, there isn't much to lose in starting your own business.

Cedric Hornbuckle did just that in 2008 when he founded Houston-based moving company Moved by Love after serving eight years of a 12-year sentence for drug distribution.

Hornbuckle was 16 when he first went to jail. During his latest stint, officials moved him around from unit to unit for fighting, and he eventually wound up at the Cleveland Correctional Facility.

Less than a year before his parole, he was accepted into the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, headquartered in Houston, Texas, where he molded his school-of-hard-knocks street knowledge with boardroom and business-school lessons.

“I always had the [entrepreneurial] mindset, it was just that I used it in bad ways. I knew all about profit margins and managing people, it’s just what I did was illegal,” he said.

Founded in 2004, the Prison Entrepreneurship Program annually handpicks candidates from 60 correctional institutions throughout Texas. They are transferred to the 506-bed Cleveland facility for a five-month program that offers a top-tier business education taught by executive volunteers, businesspeople, and MBA students.

PEP chief development officer Ralph Wheeler says that only one out of 10 applicants is admitted to the program.

Inmates learn about everything from income statements and profit margins to marketing and licensing. They take tests, meet with local business leaders, and, for their final exam, deliver a 30-minute oral business plan presentation to a judging panel of CEOs and venture capitalists from across the country.

When it comes time for release, PEP inmates have access to a reintegration program that helps with housing, clothing, medical care, transportation, and job placement. There is executive mentoring and a business incubator center in Houston. There, graduates use computers, copiers, printers, and a conference room. It also gives them a mailing address.

There’s also a strong brotherhood among PEP graduates. Hornbuckle started his business with a small van, and he got a $5,800 loan from a PEP connection to fund the purchase of his first moving truck. The company now has three trucks.

“Before I got out, I said to myself I would just create my own jobs. No one wanted to hire me. I’ve had help from PEP brothers and I’ve hired them as well,” he said.

PEP graduate Jeffrey Offutt said the program changed his character. He went to prison twice on drug charges, the last time for three years. Offutt now owns and operates Jita Printing in Houston. Before his drug and alcohol problems led him to prison, Offutt worked in graphic design.

"Prior to going to prison I was a production guy. I understood the trade but never understood the business part of it, things like receivables and balance sheets," said Offutt.

Turning criminals into entrepreneurs may not be such a radical idea. Wheeler says many students, especially those involved in the drug trade, have solid entrepreneurial skills and traits. “A lot of these guys were already entrepreneurial before they got to prison. They know about the distribution of product, managing people, inventory and pricing," said Wheeler.

Not all PEP graduates go on to become entrepreneurs. Out of the 700 graduates who have completed the program, 90 started successful businesses, says Wheeler. And of those businesses, 84 percent are still in operation two years later.

Administrators still believe that the program is a success because PEP graduates have very low recidivism rates and have a stronger track record with employment on the outside. PEP recruiter Marcus Hill says that can be attributed to the fact that a large part of the program focuses on character development and rebuilding honest and confident men.

Hill is a graduate of the program and served 5.5 years of a 17-year sentence for getting busted with seven pounds of marijuana. Outside of his day job with the PEP he runs Chosen Apparel, a T-shirt and screen-printing business.

Hill started his company in 2008 and swung the $4,000 in startup costs through personal savings, living on the cheap, and a $1,000 interest-free loan from the PEP.

"I think the entrepreneurial spirit is alive [in many criminals]. They just don't know how to leverage it for good," said Hill.

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Craig Guillot is a writer from New Orleans. Read more about his work at www.craigguillot.com.