Whilst here in Britain, we faff about arguing whether prisoners should have the right to vote or whether our sentencing procedures aren’t tough enough, America has shown once again a better way.

The FT reports on how a young Texan who was in jail for aggravated assault was prepared for release by a group of MBA volunteers and given a loan to set up a Vietnamese food truck business. He was lent $30,000 and projects to take $100,000 in his first year. In Britain we give prisoners £50 on the day of their release and if they decide not to go back to the gang whose activities often placed them there in the first place, they find that money doesn’t go very far when your family won’t have you back and you’ve got no home or job, so more than 75% are said to re-offend, often very quickly. It can cost up to £50,000 to keep a single prisoner in per year.

A lot of prisoners show an interest in food when inside – often when given tasks in the kitchens. I know this from my visits to Wormwood Scrubs and Brixton and also from working closely with Switchback – a great project that identifies such people while still inside and prepares them for the prospect of working in restaurants and hotels on release. I’ve mentored quite a few and at Roast and Moolis we’ve successfully employed some as well.

Many of the youngsters I meet this way also have a desire to set up their own food truck or micro business and simply have no clue as to how to go about doing so. The Prison Entrepreneurship Program in the US has been hugely successful and has helped hundreds of inmates set up their businesses – at a fraction of the cost of having to house them again when they re-offend.

Politicians here rarely understand the importance of food not just as an economic driver but also as a social leveller. If a fraction of what is being ploughed into technology was put into food entrepreneurship, not only would we be eventually saving money but would also be making our streets safer and food purchasing choices all the more varied.

For many, there could be a delicious alternative to the life of crime.