Breaking free: a guaranteed livable basic income and transformative justice

Darla” is currently incarcerated in a federal institution in Canada. She deeply loves her three children. She also struggles with mental health issues. She’s concerned about her upcoming release from incarceration. She’s not sure how she’ll pay for food and shelter for her family, and is afraid that she won’t be able to access the free medicines for her mental health that she can receive in prison. The city she would call home has a housing crisis. Darla anticipates that she might have to stay in a “tent city.” If she does, her children will be taken from her.

She tells a friend that at least when she is “inside” she can access her children semi-regularly, and when they see her she’s relatively stable and clean. Darla is already considering re-offending or “breaching” upon release, so that she can be re-incarcerated.

In 2024, the Office of the Federal Ombudsperson for Victims of Crime, in Remarks to a Standing Senate Committee regarding Bill S-233 (the Senate Bill calling for the creation of a national framework to begin studying a Guaranteed Livable Basic Income (GLBI)) reported these comments by a Canadian woman:

My husband tried to kill me. I had to find a way to get out while keeping the kids safe and getting them out too. I did everything to keep them safe, including leaving everything behind. We left with the clothing on our backs… My husband left me with 14 cents. You have cupboards to put your food in, and I keep mine tucked and hidden in my vehicle with my kids. We went to eating once a day. Kids always had food. I went without, but they always had at least one meal a day. My vehicle has been ticketed so much…1

A Guaranteed Liveable Basic Income could give Darla (and her children) a safety net on her release from incarceration. And a GLBI would give people in abusive situations more options, including support to get themselves and their children to safety.

“For Darla and for people in situations of domestic violence, a Guaranteed Livable Basic Income could provide much-needed practical support.”

 

Harm and wrongdoing are expensive—emotionally expensive to those who have been harmed, but also to those who have done harm, and to their families and communities. Crime is also extremely financially expensive to governments (especially when we respond through policing and incarceration).

Undeniably crime/wrongdoing is often catalyzed by financial struggles. It also exacts a financial cost, not only on offenders (and their families) but on those who’ve been harmed. It’s not surprising, then, that in CFSC’s transformative justice work we see multiple ways that a GLBI could help achieve Quakers’ goal of penal abolition.

Since a GLBI has not (yet!) been implemented, we don’t have data to prove how it would impact incarceration rates, or help those who’ve been harmed by crime. But here are some likely consequences:

  • Reduce poverty: poverty has been proven, time and again, to be a key driver of involvement with the carceral justice system.2
  • Boost mental health: mental health challenges increase the likelihood of someone coming into contact with the justice system. According to the Mental Health Commission of Canada, over 70% of federally incarcerated people meet “the criteria for one or more current mental disorders.”3 Financial stress exacerbates and creates mental health challenges. A GLBI would work to alleviate these.
  • Encourage education: when a GLBI was provided to households in Dauphin, Manitoba, one outcome was that young men stayed in school longer. 4 Since lower educational achievement is correlated with higher risk of involvement with the criminal justice system, encouraging young men to stay in school could impact incarceration rates.
  • Opportunities to access employment: people with criminal records often face significant barriers to finding employment and housing. A GLBI would not only give people financial support on re-entry, but would also enable them to more easily attend job training, therapy, and other rehabilitative programs.
  • Better support for victims of harm: an example of this would be people who are in situations of intimate partner violence. The Federal Ombudsperson statement cited above also points out that:
    “Intimate partner violence disproportionately pulls women out of the workforce. Many have to start their lives over without access to the resources they need to secure first and last month’s rent, buy new clothes for themselves and their children, toys, technology, food, school supplies, furniture, transportation, and to pay legal fees for ongoing child custody battles in family court.”
  • Opportunities to stay connected with family: CFSC advocates that a GLBI be offered to all Canadians who qualify, including people who are incarcerated. A GLBI would allow people in prison to contribute to the wellbeing of their family on the outside and would reduce the financial strain on the families of people who are incarcerated.
  • Support for children of incarcerated parents: for over a decade, CFSC has advocated for the needs of children of incarcerated parents. This is a humanitarian issue. It’s also a practical one. Adverse Childhood Events (having a parent in prison is one) increase the likelihood that someone will end up incarcerated as an adult. One impact of having a parent incarcerated is a reduction in household income and support: this would be minimized with access to a GLBI.
  • Shifting paradigms: a GLBI could reduce the stigmatizing of people who live with poverty, which could reduce the over-policing and over-criminalization that marginalized communities all-too-often face. Additionally, a GLBI is itself a shift away from a punitive response to social issues and towards more preventative measures—the very type of paradigm shift that we need to transform our current justice system.

For Darla and for people in situations of domestic violence, a GLBI could provide much-needed practical support. Additionally, a GLBI could reduce incarceration rates by addressing some of the root causes of crime, such as poverty, lack of opportunity, and economic stress. Most importantly, however, a GLBI would signal a major shift. The societal focus would move away from narrow punitive responses to wrongdoing, and towards preventive and social measures. In this way, a GLBI could contribute to a truly transformative justice system that prioritizes prevention and social wellbeing over punishment and incarceration.

For additional reading on the topic of a GLBI, check out these two sources: The Town with no poverty: the health effects of a Canadian guaranteed annual income field experiment https://utppublishing.com/doi/10.3138/cpp.37.3.283 and The case for basic income: freedom, security, justice by Jamie Swift and Elaine Power (Published by Between the Lines, Toronto: 2021).

Karen Ridd is CFSC’s Transformative Justice Program Coordinator.

  1. Remarks to the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance about Bill S-233, Office of the Federal Ombudsperson for Victims of Crime, October 8, 2024, https://www.canada.ca/en/office-federal-ombudsperson-victims-crime/recommendations-recommandations/2024-25/20241008.html
  2. John Howard Society of Ontario, The counter point, Issue 1, https://johnhoward.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/counter-point-1-poverty-and-crime-is-there-a-connection.pdf; John Howard Society of Toronto, Jailed and homeless: homeless and jailed, August, 2010, https://johnhoward.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Amber-Kellen-Homeless-and-Jailed-Jailed-and-Homeless.pdf
  3. Mental Health Commission of Canada, Mental health and the criminal justice system: ‘what we heard,’ 2020, https://mentalhealthcommission.ca/wp-content/uploads/drupal/2020-08/mental_health_and_the_law_evidence_summary_report_eng.pdf
  4. Travis Tomchuk, Manitoba’s Mincome experiment, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, August 10, 2022, https://humanrights.ca/story/manitobas-mincome-experiment