Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps her Department is taking to improve support for people being released from prison.

We are committed to ensuring pre-release plans are created for those leaving custody, to ensure their needs are identified early and individual robust plans are in place to address these.

We are working closely with the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government and other Departments on the development of a new cross-government strategy to put us back on track to ending homelessness, as well as delivering our temporary accommodation service (CAS3), so all offenders leaving prison at risk of homelessness who are supervised by probation are offered up to 12 weeks of accommodation to provide a stable base on release.

We are also working with prisons to improve offenders’ access to purposeful activity, including learning, to improve prisoners’ reading, numeracy and vocational training so that more prisoners are prepared for work on release. In addition, we have launched regional Employment Councils, which for the first time will bring businesses together with probation and the Department of Work and Pensions to support offenders in the community.

To support prison leavers with a drug or alcohol need, over 50 Health and Justice Partnership Coordinators nationwide are improving links between prison, probation and treatment providers, and we have secure laptops to enable prisoners to meet with community treatment providers virtually, prior to release.