“I’m going to prison,” I told my husband, Larry.I’d been asked to write a case study for Harvard Business School about prisons, but I didn’t know the first thing about them.Larry looked skeptical. “You know, you can write about prisons without actually GOING to one…”Ignoring him, I replied to a Craigslist post: “Volunteers wanted to teach entrepreneurship to incarcerated men and women.”***Three weeks later, armed with a bag full of textbooks, we walked through the metal detector at a medium-security prison. An alarm rang out and the guard stopped Larry. “Remove your belt, Sir.”Larry gave me a sideways glance. “Tell me again why I agreed to this?” he whispered as we followed the guard through the prison gate and into the makeshift classroom.As the inmates shuffled in, I moved closer to Larry. They took their seats and I cleared my throat. “Hi. We’re here to teach you how to start your own business when you are released.”They sat in silence, listening respectfully as we assured them they could be tailors, run food trucks, and start lawn care businesses.By the end of the hour I was on a first name basis with 12 drug dealers, car thieves, and burglars eager for a fresh start. Mike wanted to clean church windows “to keep them beautiful.” Joe planned to open a pet portrait business. “To show my kid I can make it,” he said. They knew felons faced a tough job market; to earn a living, they’d have to make their own opportunities.***When I was ten year old, I learned my Dad was in trouble with the IRS. His slipper import business had gone belly up and the feds were hounding him for unpaid payroll taxes. They garnished his wages and, unable to support us on his shrunken paycheck, he quit his new job. He spent years selling leftover inventory at flea markets, preparing tax returns for H&R Block customers and taking off-the-books accounting work. I feared if the IRS found him, they’d drag him off to prison.***Twelve weeks after walking into prison, we “graduated” our class. I’d also finished my case study so there was no need to return. But I knew I would go back to prison. I had to. The father of a worried ten year old could be in my next class.