Our research into what happens to information when people leave prison, and why it matters for employment, health, and rehabilitation.
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 skills they developed, the qualifications they earned: all of that information stays behind the gate. The agencies waiting on the other side, the ones responsible for helping that person find work, continue treatment, and rebuild their life, start from scratch.
This is the data divide.
In 2025, The Oswin Project was commissioned by the North East Combined Authority, through the DWP-funded Economic Inactivity Trailblazer Programme, to investigate this problem and develop practical solutions. Working in partnership with Newcastle University, we spent six months mapping how employment, health, and skills information moves (or fails to move) between prison and community services, with a particular focus on people managed under MAPPA (Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements), where the barriers are most acute.
The project was deliberately designed as action research, not a desk exercise. We spoke to the people who live and work inside this system every day: prison staff, probation officers, police, employers, voluntary organisations, and, crucially, people who have experienced the data divide first hand.
The scale of the problem
Nationally, only 17% of people leaving prison secure employment within a year of release. In the North East, 67% of people reoffend within twelve months of release, rising to 73% for those serving short sentences. Research consistently shows that employment is the single strongest protective factor against reoffending, yet the systems designed to support people into work are undermined by fragmented information sharing before they even begin.
The Oswin Project achieves a reoffending rate of under 4% among the people we support. The difference is employment, mentoring, and sustained support. But we cannot scale that model effectively when every person arriving at our door brings a blank page instead of a record of who they are and what they have already achieved.
What we found
Our research confirmed what frontline workers have known for years, but documented it with evidence that can inform policy:
- Information is routinely lost at the prison gate. Training records, health plans, and employment histories held on prison systems are not transferred to community services in any consistent or timely way. People arriving at probation, at the Jobcentre, or at organisations like ours have to start again, repeating assessments and rebuilding records that already exist somewhere in the system.
- MAPPA creates additional barriers. People subject to MAPPA supervision face all the same information gaps as other prison leavers, compounded by restrictions and conditions that are often invisible to the organisations trying to support them. Third-sector organisations regularly receive referrals without knowing the risk management plan, the licence conditions, or even basic details about the person’s circumstances. They operate in an information vacuum, expected to provide intensive support without the context needed to do it safely or well.
- Employer reluctance is real, but it is not fixed. Through our Employer Confidence Day, we worked with employers who have hired people with convictions and those considering it. The conversations moved quickly past the nature of offences and toward practical questions: how long ago, what has changed, who is supporting this person. Two things consistently moved employers from hesitation to willingness: clear evidence of rehabilitation, and the availability of a named third-sector contact who could answer questions and be a first call if concerns arose.
- The third sector is doing the work but is excluded from the system. Voluntary organisations provide much of the relational, sustained support that statutory services cannot, yet they have no formal role in MAPPA and no access to the information that would help them do that work effectively. Every organisation at our Third Sector Day raised this without prompting.
What we built
The project was not just about documenting problems. We co-designed three practical tools with the people who would use them:
- The Prisoner Passport: a physical document, owned by the individual, that captures their skills, training, qualifications, health information, and goals before they leave prison. It travels with the person, not the system, and gives whoever supports them on the other side a starting point instead of a blank page.
- The Employer Confidence Handbook: built from the ground up at our Employer Confidence Day, this six-section guide gives employers the practical information and frameworks they need to make confident hiring decisions about people with convictions. It covers disclosure, risk assessment, legal obligations, and ongoing support, written in plain language for people who are not criminal justice professionals.
- The Information Bridge Worker: a new role, based in the third sector, that sits between prison and community services and ensures that information, relationships, and support plans survive the transition. The Bridge Worker is not a case manager or a probation officer. They are the person who makes sure the Prisoner Passport is completed, that receiving agencies know what they need to know, and that the individual has a consistent point of contact throughout.
Why this matters
Every year, thousands of people leave prisons in the North East and walk into an information void. Services duplicate effort, employers are left unsupported, and individuals who have worked hard to change are set up to fail by systems that do not talk to each other.
The solutions are not complex. They do not require new technology or new legislation. They require better coordination of what already exists, anchored in trusted relationships and practical tools that work in the real world.
This project has generated the evidence to make that case. The Prisoner Passport, the Employer Confidence Handbook, and the Bridge Worker model are ready to be scaled, and the case for doing so is backed by the voices of the professionals, employers, and individuals who helped design them.
The project was delivered by The Oswin Project in partnership with the North East Combined Authority and Newcastle University, funded by the Department for Work and Pensions through the Economic Inactivity Trailblazer Programme.