Dr. Ann Hoyt, a member of the Executive Committee of the NCBA CLUSA Board of Directors, will be featured in a live stream colloquium on The Challenge of Offender Re-Entry: A Cooperative Response on Monday, October 14, 2013 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., Eastern.Hosted by The Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis located at Indiana University Bloomington, Dr. Hoyt will discuss the feasibility and transferability of the social cooperative model to the United States. Questions related to cooperative structure, supporting public policies, and current re-entry efforts in the U.S. will be addressed.Colloquium Abstract: A growing number of worker cooperatives in Italy include inmates in their workforce. Inmates who work in these co-ops during and after their incarceration average 1-5% post-release recidivism rates. Inmate co-ops are a specific type of Italian social cooperative. Dr. Hoyt will describe her exploratory research on the potential of social cooperatives for reducing recidivism and the public policy environment that encourages Italian social cooperatives. The study is based on in-depth interviews with academics, judges, wardens, and co-op officials from a wide variety of cooperatives in northern Italy and on visits to co-ops and prisons.
Bio: Dr. Ann Hoyt, a professor of Consumer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Consumer Cooperative Specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Extension, has extensive experience with cooperatives as an educator, researcher, director and manager. She has served as a director of numerous cooperatives and cooperative foundations. A significant part of her work at the University of Wisconsin has focused on governance. This includes training hundreds of directors, introducing new governance systems to the cooperative movement, and development of extensive director training materials. She has worked with a wide variety of cooperatives including consumer goods, health care, purchasing, worker-owned, insurance, rural electric, farm supply and credit unions. She has been the director of the Annual Conference of the Consumer Cooperative Management Association for 25 years, was the Board Chair of the UW Credit Union (UWCU) for 9 years. The UWCU is a nearly $1.7 billion credit union with over 185,000 members. Ann was a Co-Investigator on the University of Wisconsin study of the economic impact of US cooperatives. She has often presented her research at international cooperative research conferences and currently is one of an 11 member international Steering Committee for the International Cooperative Alliance’s Global Cooperative Monitor. An NCBA CLUSA Board member since 1992, Ann has served on nearly every NCBA CLUSA committee, has been the Board Chair, has represented NCBA CLUSA at meetings throughout the world and has had extensive experience with NCBA CLUSA ‘s international development programs.