The last few years have seen significant victories for the guaranteed income movement — the push to simply give people cash with no strings attached. Pilot programs in places ranging from Stockton, California, to southwestern Kenya have been launched in recent years, and the research literature on the positive effects of guaranteed income is growing.

A new pilot program is now pushing guaranteed income into a new frontier by focusing on a potentially controversial constituency: formerly incarcerated people. The outcome of the program may help define the political bounds of just giving people money.

Just Income GNV — a guaranteed income project by Community Spring, an organization dedicated to dismantling structural poverty and spurring economic mobility — last month launched a guaranteed income experiment for people who were formerly incarcerated in Alachua County, Florida. In January, the first half of participants in the program received $1,000 each. Over the next 11 months, they will receive $600 each per month as an unconditional cash transfer, which means recipients can spend it however they choose.

Formerly incarcerated people disproportionately face major financial hardship, including trouble finding jobs and housing. This cash can be used to find or keep stable housing, pay fines and fees to avoid reincarceration, invest in education, or anything people need to assist in reentry.

Murray, one of the program’s recipients, spoke with me about receiving the first payment. (Vox is withholding his last name to protect his privacy.) “I already planned when it went through I was going to pay these restitutions, things that would’ve took me months and months to pay,” he said. “I got most of it paid in one walk.” He was also able to get a mobile scooter chair to assist in mobility around town, buy new socks, and help his nephew with gas money.

The Florida experiment could be an important test of the impact guaranteed income could have for some of the most vulnerable members of society at a moment when the idea is picking up momentum. “If this can work for folks who are really at the lowest point of our social and economic hierarchy, then I think the implications are going to be both broad and specific,” Couloute told me. “It’ll pertain to other folks with criminal records across the country and also to anyone who is struggling with issues of economic stability and social disadvantage.”

Read the full article about guaranteed income by Siobhan McDonough at Vox.