Prisoners' Release: Homelessness

(asked on 1st September 2020) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effect on the level of homelessness among prison leavers of his Department’s accommodation support scheme for those people.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 9th September 2020

As of 26 August, a total of 420 individuals who had no pre-existing accommodation have had settled accommodation secured by Homelessness Prevention Taskforces (HPTs). This has included individuals’ own accommodation, local authority sourced accommodation, private rented sector, approved premises, and voluntary sector places. These figures are calculated from management information data provided by regional HPTs, and should be considered as indicative and subject to change as the scheme progresses.

As part of its Covid-19 response, HMPPS set up seven HPTs to work with local authorities and other partners to find accommodation for offenders released from prison. The taskforces are still active and HMPPS is considering how to continue the work that they have carried out during the pandemic in the long-term. Additionally, the Ministry of Justice secured up to £8.5 million to support individuals at risk of homelessness on their release from prison and help them to move on into permanent accommodation. This scheme commenced in mid-May and concluded on 31 August.

The department aims to track the one-year reoffending rates of individuals enrolled on the scheme when this data is available. Given the need to wait 18 months for an offence to occur and to be proven, and for this to be processed by the courts, this data will not be available until spring/summer 2022. Due to the lack of a suitable counterfactual or control group, this monitoring of outcomes will not constitute an assessment of the impact of the scheme on the rehabilitation or reoffending outcomes of individuals.

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