Project Entrepreneur at Boston College, launched last year, is among a small number of similar efforts that use entrepreneurship training programs to tackle high rates of unemployment and recidivism among the formerly incarcerated.

These programs, which take place both inside prisons and on college campuses, are an attempt to provide inmates and ex-inmates with the skills, confidence, and contacts they need to start their own businesses. They also aim to open traditional students’ eyes to the stigmas and systematic barriers to employment former prisoners face.

While many colleges are making safety rules for students to return to campus this fall, it's not clear how they will approach enforcement.

In particular, institutions have a limited ability to control the behavior of students off campus. And mechanisms that would give them some control, such as requiring students to sign formal contracts, risk sending the message that campuses aren't safe.