Inside MTC’s Sanders Estes Unit in Venus, Texas, you’ll find men like Jesse Berry Jr. engaged in business proposals.

Jesse is part of the facility’s Prison Entrepreneurship Program or PEP. Participants learn from CEOs and other executives and develop a business plan they hope to launch after they’re released.

“Number one, I like to bring people and families together. So, just to have a mobile screen printing business, I’ll be able to fill a small niche in the market that larger corporations cannot.”

Jesse wants to open a mobile screening business. People will hire him to come to fundraisers, family events, and other gatherings to print customized t-shirts on the spot.

“So, the unity that these t-shirts can bring. Everyone will have their own distinguished look. It’s priceless.”

Jesse says his experience at the Sanders Estes Unit has helped him to become a new man.

“It has transformed me completely. Even my family has said I was a robot. I didn’t talk a lot.”

But now he talks all the time, pitching his business ideas to classmates and sharing how he’s become a different man.

“I know where I’m going, but one thing I can’t forget is what it took for me to get here: every trial, every tribulation, everything I went through in life has made me the man I am today.”

Jesse has been incarcerated for four years and will be released in March.

“I’m going to make sure I’m committed to being a changed man, not only for myself and my past family members who have passed away, but for my daughters and my family.”

He says everyone at the Sanders Estes Unit has been extremely supportive and that’s made a difference in his life.

“I feel like everyone on this unit, whether it’s the brotherhood and the unity as well as the staff—I can say they give you a helping hand. They never try to hold you down.”