When someone leaves prison, they walk out with a plastic bag of belongings and very little else. The training they completed inside, the health conditions being managed, the qualifications they earned: all of it stays behind the gate. The agencies meant to help them find work and rebuild a life start from scratch.
We call this the data divide. In 2025, commissioned by the North East Combined Authority through the DWP-funded Economic Inactivity Trailblazer Programme, we spent six months mapping how skills, health, and employment information fails to move between prison and community services. We focused on people managed under MAPPA, where the barriers are sharpest.
The findings were stark. Information is routinely lost at the gate. People arrive at probation, the Jobcentre, or our door with a blank page instead of a record of who they are and what they have achieved. Nationally, only 17% of prison leavers find work within a year. In the North East, 67% reoffend within twelve months. The Oswin Project keeps reoffending under 4%, but we cannot scale that when everyone arrives starting from nothing.
So we built three things, co-designed with the people who would use them. A Prisoner Passport that travels with the individual, not the system. An Employer Confidence Handbook written in plain language for the people doing the hiring. And an Information Bridge Worker to make sure support survives the transition.
The solutions are not complex. They do not need new technology or new legislation. They need better coordination of what already exists, anchored in trusted relationships. The evidence is now there. The case for scaling it is too.
0 responses to “Bridging the Data Divide”