Reducing Recidivism through Entrepreneurship: A Systematic Literature Review

Recidivism is mostly defined as a repetitive act of crime involving ex-convict. The lack of job opportunities and the incapabilities of gaining income due to the status of being involved in criminal act in the past is one of the few factors frequently mentioned being the reason as to why recidivism among them occurred. However, entrepreneurship is said to be able to reduce recidivism as it provides ways for ex-convict to find decent jobs or obtain skills in order to gain income Therefore, this systematic review focuses on how entrepreneurship can reduce recidivism among ex-convict through reviewing a considerable amount of past studies. There were five key methodological steps included in the process namely guided by review protocol, formulation of research questions, systematic searching strategies which involves two mainly established databases namely Scopus and Web of Science and one supporting database namely Google Scholar, followed by quality appraisal and data extraction and analysis. Using thematic analysis, this review contains three themes namely 1) factor that leads to recidivism, 2) the importance of reducing recidivism and 3) entrepreneurship as tool to reduce recidivism. Further analysis from the two main themes leads to the establishment of few sub-themes. This review is expected to bring significant contributions especially in providing an in-depth understanding towards recidivism and how entrepreneurship can be used as a tool to help reduce recidivism. The findings explained the importance of reducing recidivism and how entrepreneurship can be considered as one of the available options for the prisoners/ex-prisoners to gain income and reintegrate into the community.