Can Giving Money to Ex-Cons Keep Them Out of Prison?

Kevin Scott gives money away. Recipients can do whatever they want with the no-strings-attached $800 they receive each month. The money is doled out over the course of a year, meaning the participants get nearly $10,000 by the time the spigot is turned off. So far, Scott and the initiative he leads on behalf of a Gainesville, Florida–based nonprofit have given away a total of $1.3 million to 172 men and women. They all have one thing in common: They were recently released from prison.

Guaranteed income programs have been proposed for centuries—from Thomas More to Thomas Paine to Martin Luther King Jr. to Sam Altman—and have been fiercely debated across the centuries, too. According to one study, there are currently 70 pilot programs of various kinds across the country, with proponents arguing that they help pull people out of poverty. Opponents say they amount to “welfare for able-bodied adults with no strings attached.” It is thus unsurprising that a program involving unrestricted cash for convicted criminals would elicit mixed reactions.

“The jury is still out on whether they produce better public safety outcomes than. . . mental health services [and] job training,” Jennifer Webb-McRae, president of the National District Attorneys Association, told me recently.