By Kevin Scott
Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: What does a guaranteed income look like for recently released prisoners?
Kevin Scott: It’s freedom, opportunity, dignity. For many prisoners getting released, they’re not just ‘re-entering’ the world. They’re entering for the very first time. So a guaranteed income means opportunity. Not even a new start – just a start, for a lot of folks.
Many people don’t realise that it costs money to get freedom from prison these days. When someone gets released, they might have court debt, restitution payments, probation fees, or drug testing. All these things have a price.
Most people come out of prison with an extraordinary amount of debt, in addition to the ordinary costs of rent, food, clothing, things like that. If you’re unable to make those payments, you will be re-incarcerated, just for not having enough money.
We use this phrase all the time: ‘you are too poor to be free’. It’s the unfortunate truth, and it happens all the time. People go in and out of prison because of poverty, and they stay in poverty because of prison. It’s a revolving door.
When we came across the opportunity to do a guaranteed income project, we said, what if we did it for people who’ve been incarcerated? What if we could interrupt that revolving door? And that’s been our intervention for the last few years.
BTS: How does the programme work in practice?
Kevin: Anyone who’s been released in the last six months is eligible, but we try to get people as close to release as we can. Folks put their names in a hat, and we do a random draw. Each person that gets selected receives $1,000 in the first month and then $600 a month for the next 11 months after that.
It is unconditional, no strings attached. People can use the money for anything they want. We believe very much that people are the experts in their own lives and should be able to make their own decisions.
BTS: Has this money made a difference to people’s lives?
Kevin: Absolutely. We’re currently collaborating with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania to document the evidence, and we’ll have some really compelling findings to share soon. But I don’t need the numbers to tell me what I’ve already seen with my own eyes.
Guaranteed income has increased people’s employment opportunities. It has increased people’s housing stability. It has increased people’s joy, their well-being, their happiness, and their ease. It has reduced stress. Among our recipients, we saw a 43% decrease in money-related probation violations. Just that alone is enough.
Hope goes a long way for people who are accustomed to hopelessness
A lot of folks have reported back that it’s made them feel like a human being, like they can be trusted. In some cases, people have spent decades inside an institution that required 100% compliance and control all day. People would tell me: I’m treated like an animal, I’m cussed at. I’m starved, I’m burned, I’m frozen.
Imagine going from that to having someone take a genuine interest in your life, and being given full latitude to spend this money. It means so much. The material things are great, but for many it’s about being treated like a human being for the first time in a very long time.
BTS: Can you tell us about how guaranteed income has helped any of your beneficiaries to break the prison-poverty cycle?
Kevin: I’ll tell you a little story about Murray. He grew up in a low-income family in the south. He’s Black and gay, and had to fight just to survive. He ended up having to commit crime to sustain his livelihood, and was in and out of prison many times.
The fourth time he was sent to prison, he was told they’d made a mistake – it was literally a mathematical error. So he was released, and he told us that in the van coming home he was crying, because he was afraid for his future. He said he knew he’d end up back in prison soon enough, because crime was his only option for survival.
That’s when he heard about our programme. He applied and was randomly selected. Murray told us it was the first time he’d had hope in his life. He said he felt valued in a way he’d never felt before. It caused a major shift in his perspective.
Murray had had hip surgery in prison, and has a hard time standing and walking now as a result. So when he got his first payment, he bought a mobility scooter at a local thrift store. The scooter meant he could get around town, use the bus, and go to visit his sick mother. It opened up his entire world.
With his second payment, he went to the store and bought ingredients to make 100 lunches, and he gave them out to people who were living on the street, because he himself had been homeless in the past. Murray just took it upon himself to show kindness with scant resources. He didn’t want to feel like a burden.
And he’s been free ever since he received that first payment – it’s been several years now. So this is what the money does. Because the income is unconditional, Murray could use it for whatever he wanted. We give people total agency – or at least, we acknowledge the agency they already had. They give it to themselves really.
BTS: How could this change the criminal justice system on a systemic level?
Kevin: The majority of people in prison come from poverty to begin with. Once they’re incarcerated, they become even poorer. Their families are also poorer. Guaranteed income gives somebody a chance to take a breath and to stop living in a place of crisis, so they can start making some choices from a place of power instead. That interrupts the cycle of prison and poverty. And we’ve seen that happen with our folks’ lives.
Even if the human cost of prisons doesn’t mean much to our policy makers, it’s at least in their financial interest to take that seriously
When folks get out of prison in Florida, the most they get is $50. Their bodies have been put into cages for years, then the door is opened and they’re handed a $50 bill – and told to go create their lives. What are you going to do with that?
There have been measures to increase what’s called gate money around the country, but even if you get handed $200 or $1,000, you’re still pretty doomed. People should have a proper cushion when they come out.
BTS: Do you think programmes like yours could reduce spending on prisons?
Kevin: We have the highest incarceration rate on the planet by a lot. We are the heavyweight champions of incarceration; an astronomical amount of money is spent on it. The prison-industrial complex obviously has profits attached to it as well. Never forget that for every person behind bars there’s some individual or company on the other end that is benefiting. It is in someone’s interest to keep those beds full.
But it’s a huge waste of money for the state. Putting someone in prison because they don’t have enough money is the most expensive, least efficient solution. In Florida, it costs $28,000 a year to keep somebody in prison. With the guaranteed income programme, we’re just giving somebody $7,600. If that keeps even a small percentage of the population out of prison, it creates a massive public savings.
So even if the human cost of prisons doesn’t mean much to our policy makers, it’s at least in their financial interest to take that seriously.
BTS: This makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much for sharing these powerful stories with us. Do you have anything to add?
Kevin: That these people are human beings, with real, complex lives. And they suffer for a long time because of their experiences in prison. There’s one more story I’d like to share with you. It’s about a woman called Venettia.
She experienced terrible domestic abuse while I knew her. I knew her while she was staying at a homeless shelter, and then after she had come out of prison. After her release, Venettia put her name down to be selected for Just Income. She was randomly selected and received her payments.
It allowed her to take a breath, and she was able to extract herself from an abusive relationship. The money gave her leverage to make a move for herself. She was able to address her addiction. She told me, “this money got me clean”.
She reconnected with her children and with other members of her family. She was able to get certified for work. The money drastically shifted Venettia’s life, and it was just because somebody believed in her.
We spoke to her about how her life had changed, and she said, “hope goes a long way for people who are accustomed to hopelessness”. There could not be a more succinct encapsulation of why we do what we do.
For me, that’s all I needed when I got out of prison. That’s all Venettia needed. Just believe in me. Just see me as a person and let me show you what I can do.
