By Amanda Hernández, Stateline.org
When Karina Lariz was released from a California prison in September 2021, she had only the clothes she was arrested in — stretched out and weathered by time. She had lost her home, her car and her job. Her two children had moved in with other family .
“I didn’t have nothing, everything that I had within those two weeks of coming home was what I found in donation bins,” recalled Lariz, who was incarcerated for three years. She added: “I was so worried about, ‘How am I going to get to these different programs? Where am I going to sleep at?’”
After her release, Lariz spent two days at a motel before moving into a transitional home. She also participated in a job training program.
Then came an unexpected lifeline: direct cash payments through a nonprofit program called the Returning Citizens Stimulus. The Center for Employment Opportunities, an organization that offers reentry and services to formerly incarcerated people in 28 cities, runs the program.
With the money, Lariz, 35, was able to buy clothes for job interviews, cover groceries and public transportation fare, and begin rebuilding her life and relationships. The money, totaling nearly $2,500 over three payments, helped her gain footing in the weeks following her release — a period often marked by high risk of recidivism and reincarceration.
“It liberated a lot of stress,” she said.
Now, a new independent evaluation of the initiative suggests that short-term aid may have positive long-term effects. The study comes as some states are considering whether direct financial is an effective — or appropriate — tool for reducing recidivism.
In 2022, Lariz landed a job with the very organization that helped fund her reentry. She now works as a program associate on the organizing team at the Center for Employment Opportunities, where she helps others leaving prison.
Nearly four years after her release, Lariz is married and again living with her two children.
“If I didn’t have that , I would have not pushed myself to do half of the things that I did,” Lariz said.
She is one of more than 10,000 formerly incarcerated people across 28 cities who received through the Center for Employment Opportunities’ stimulus program, which launched in April 2020.
The national organization works with local agencies to distribute up to $2,750 in cash over 60 days, contingent on participants completing basic milestones, such as creating a resume or attending a job readiness workshop. More than 80% of participants complete their milestones and receive the full payments.
People leaving prison often face staggering rates of joblessness, homelessness and food insecurity. Most program participants used the funds to cover food, rent, utilities or public transportation fare. Some participants also used the money to pay off credit card and medical debt.
“The basics of survival are this acute challenge in those early days of reentry, and then you layer on that sort of the big structural challenges,” said Sam Schaeffer, the executive director and CEO of the Center for Employment Opportunities. “Just putting food on the table, just getting to work, just getting that set of interview clothes is so critical.”
The new study s that assessment.
According to the study— which was conducted by MDRC, a research organization focusing on poverty reduction — participants were significantly less likely to violate parole than peers who did not receive payments. Within the first six months after release, parole violations fell by more than 41%, with violent parole violations dropping by 64%. The study evaluated the outcomes of people who were released in 2020 in Los Angeles and Alameda counties in California.
Roughly 77 million Americans — or about 1 in 3 adults — have a criminal record, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That includes records of arrests, charges and criminal convictions. Formerly incarcerated people often face stigma and major barriers in the job market.
They also often return home without savings or financial resources and earn less than half as much as peers who have never been incarcerated over their careers, according to a 2020 report by the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning law and policy institute at the New York University School of Law.
Legislation and pilot programs
A bill introduced in the New York legislature earlier this year would create a reentry fund to offer cash payments of $425 each month for up to six months for eligible residents leaving prison. The bill has been stalled in committee since January and is unlikely to before the legislature adjourns in June.
Some critics say that the proposed New York program is a redundant and unrestricted handout for people with criminal records, and question whether limited public safety funds should individuals already eligible for state services, including Medicaid, food assistance, job placement programs and housing aid.
“This is just one more element of what is an overall theme by the Democrats here in Albany to coddle criminals and put their priorities over the priorities of victims and law-abiding citizens,” New York state Sen. George Borrello, a Republican, told Stateline.
This isn’t the first time states have considered offering stipends to people leaving prison.
Most recently, legislators in Colorado in 2024 and North Carolina in 2023 proposed bills that would have provided monthly payments to formerly incarcerated individuals. Neither bill made it out of its originating chamber, but both bills proposed up to $3,000 in .
In Colorado, the pilot program would have offered money for basic living expenses to those who enrolled in workforce training programs following incarceration in a state facility. In North Carolina, the proposal would have provided monthly stipends for housing, food, clothing and transportation for up to six months after release.
Similar pilot cash assistance programs have launched in New Haven, Connecticut; Gainesville, Florida; and Philadelphia.
The Gainesville program, which ran from January 2022 to February 2023, had 115 participants. They received $1,000 in the first month, followed by monthly payments of $600. An impact report released in February found that participants experienced greater financial security, reduced mental stress and lower rates of recidivism.
Potential savings
In 2022 — the most recent year with available data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual survey of state and local government finances — state governments spent $58 billion to incarcerate more than 1 million people in state facilities.
Forty-four percent of all state prison issions in 2021 were people who violated the of their parole or probation sentences, according to a 2024 report by the Council of State Governments Justice Center. On any given day, 1 in 4 people in state prison were incarcerated due to supervision violations — costing states more than $10 billion collectively.
Some critics maintain that the most effective way to prevent crime is to punish those who break the law.
“We do not do enough to hold people able,” said Borrello, the New York state senator who opposes the bill that would create a reentry fund in his state. “I really don’t give any credence to [ers’] thoughts on whether or not they think this is going to save money down the road.”
For people such as Karina Lariz, though, the impact is personal and profound.
“I’ve been able to redefine and find who I am today, like the real Karina — not the Karina that grew up in trauma and all the problems that I had before incarceration,” she said.
Stateline reporter Amanda Hernández can be reached at [email protected].
©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
