Guaranteed income: A promising direction for intervention with transition age youth in reentry

• Individual and family-focused reentry interventions fail to address material and structural barriers of reentry. • Guaranteed income is a promising intervention to address material and structural barriers transition age youth face in reentry transition. • Guaranteed income can promote developmental growth, well-being, and reintegration. This article explores the potential of guaranteed income programs as an intervention for transition age youth reentering the community after extended confinement. Through a narrative review of research on guaranteed income programs, desistance, and reentry in the current political economy, it shows how guaranteed income can address some limitations of dominant rehabilitation and individual-risk-reduction-focused models of intervention. Drawing on this literature, four theoretical propositions are developed to explain how guaranteed income could plausibly mitigate material and structural barriers to reentry and create opportunities that support young people with the transition out of confinement and into adulthood. Specifically, it proposes that guaranteed income is likely to promote stability and security, autonomy and agency, exploration and identity development, and reintegration. The article concludes with limitations of guaranteed income programs as a response to deeper economic and structural issues of inequality and criminalization, and implications for research and intervention.