Barclays offers bank accounts to prison inmates

Barclays said it was offering bank accounts to prison inmates as part of a programme to help reintegrate offenders.
Barclays, Britain's fourth-biggest bank by market value, plans to extend the scheme to 14 prisons in the east of England, having trialled it at three institutions since 2007, it said on Monday.
"The long-term financially excluded, such as prisoners, are amongst the hardest to reach in society," Mark Parsons, Barclays' managing director of current accounts, saving and mortgages, said in a statement.
"Quite often they have poor financial literacy skills and don't have the confidence to walk into a bank."
Barclays is the third British bank to set up a formal programme to provide bank accounts to the incarcerated, with Lloyds Banking Group's Halifax and mutually-owned Cooperative Bank operating similar schemes, said a spokesman for UNLOCK, the National Association of Reformed Offenders.
UNLOCK, joint manager of the Barclays scheme, said a high proportion of the prison population has no access to financial services and holding a bank account can help recently-released offenders get jobs and find somewhere to live.
Under the Barclays programme, offenders nearing the end of their sentence are offered basic Barclays bank accounts — which have no credit facilities — and are given basic financial training to improve their money management skills. (Reuters Life!)