Prisoners who got their benefit claims ready before release were more likely to receive money from their first day out, a trial in 18 prisons has found.
The trial ran in 2022 and 2023 in prisons across England, Wales and Scotland. Under the usual rules, staff advise people leaving prison to make a claim for Universal Credit (UC) on the day they walk out. The trial took a different approach. Staff helped prisoners prepare their claims in the weeks before release, and each claim went in once the person had left custody.
Around 4,000 prisoners took part. Each received an invitation to meet a Prison Work Coach shortly before release to prepare a UC claim. Contact with the Department for Work and Pensions took place by phone or online.
Around 3,000 of the people in the trial submitted a UC claim on the day they left prison. That share was 6 percentage points higher than under the normal process.
The gain was larger for UC advances, the early payments that claimants can request. The proportion who had an advance approved within one day rose by 10 percentage points compared with the usual system.
The trial did not change one measure. The overall share of prison leavers who went on to claim UC stayed the same.
Staff on the ground welcomed the approach. One Prison Work Coach told researchers it was “setting people up to succeed rather than fail”. The coach added: “It’s amazing, [prisoners] visibly relax. They say ‘Why isn’t it happening everywhere?’.”
The scheme had a cost. It created extra work for Prison Work Coaches, who had to cut back the help they gave to prisoners outside the trial.
Even so, the researchers judged the results encouraging. They wrote: “Feedback from prison work coaches was largely positive and their perception was that the approach has been welcomed by prison leavers and had a positive impact on them.”
