A prisoner in need

Last year, Pentonville prison on north London’s bleak Caledonian Road released more than 7,000 prisoners back into the community, of whom 1,100 had no home to go to.

The prison, a stone’s throw from the drugs, the drink, the quagmire of temptation that characterises Kings Cross, gives £94.40 to the ex-con of ‘no fixed abode’ and bids them their freedom. They leave with their belongings in a see-through plastic bag bearing the legend, HM Prisons.

Most will be back, whether caught red-handed committing a crime or allowing themselves to be detected breaking the law for the chance to return to prison where they will at least have a roof over their heads, regular meals and the opportunity to see a doctor.

If one was looking for an easy target to attack, then the prison service is akin to hunting dairy cows with a semi-automatic rifle.

But Dominic Raffo, homelessness prevention coordinator at Pentonville for charity St Mungo’s, is not into criticism.

Certainly things are, from his point of view, sometimes “mad,” services are “grossly insufficient” and the system steeped in “bureaucracy,” but all this goes with the territory.

Raffo and prison move-on worker Lynda Middleton have made a six foot by 10 foot cell into their office.

It is cramped, almost claustrophobically stuffy, and imagining the two prisoners this cell would usually house spending up to 23 hours each day here makes one vow never so much as to return a library book late in future.

Their services range from giving advice on housing and benefits to locating hostel beds for newly released prisoners, and are available to all who pass through Pentonville. At any one time they will be pursuing more than 150 enquiries.

They deal with a customer base of whom 85 per cent have a history of substance abuse, 50 per cent have misused alcohol and 40 per cent have mental health problems. Multiple problems are common.

“Many of the people we see have problems with their identity. They are easily stressed,” says Raffo, “and many are very unsympathetic people.”

New prisoners are quizzed upon arriving at Pentonville to ascertain the risk they may pose to themselves and others.

Addictions, needs and housing issues are all addressed by prison authorities, and prisoners are issued a booklet in which the St Mungo’s team outlines the help available.

“At any stage the prisoner can come to us for help,” says Raffo, “but they may not get it quickly due to our workload and bureaucratic constraints.

“If someone already has a tenancy, we will try to move as fast as possible so they do not lose it. Hanging onto a home makes all the difference in the world to prisoners.”

He adds: “Housing benefit is a bad area for most boroughs, as they have contracted out the service to private providers who have made it very difficult indeed for our clients by restricting phone line opening times and increasing the bureaucracy surrounding the sending of letters for backdating benefit.”

To appreciate the mammoth task facing the St Mungo’s team on a daily basis, consider a paradox that will make you want to bang your head against the wall, and gives the clearest glimpse into exactly how many people slip through the net, some by a matter of days.

Here comes the science part. Concentrate.

While a prisoner is being detained on remand but has not yet been sentenced, they can continue to receive housing benefit for up to 52 weeks.

Once convicted and sentenced, a prisoner can receive housing benefit as long as their time spent in prison does not exceed 13 weeks.

However, if a prisoner is to serve around a 14-15 week sentence, they will not receive housing benefit paid up to 13 weeks. They get nothing and lose their tenancy except in the unlikely event that someone else is willing to pay their rent for the duration.

Raffo calls this situation “mad”.

“We’ve saved a considerable number of tenancies,” he says with justifiable pride.

“Our clients face massive social exclusion. They are not defined as ‘rough sleepers’ even though a surprising number live in cars or vans. Because they are not sleeping on the streets, they cannot access the beds available for those defined as rough sleepers.”

There are a vast number of organisations that work with ex-offenders, but the majority do not work with short-term and remand prisoners who are not on probation, as it is the Probation Service to whom many of these organisations are ultimately answerable. Provision is “grossly insufficient,” says Raffo.

St Mungo’s was awarded just under £50,000 of the £250,000 of government money given to the Rough Sleepers Unit to distribute to projects tackling homelessness, and set up the project within Pentonville prison around a year ago.

Raffo and Middleton have been up and running in their cell for four months. They know better than anyone that the £46.75 given to over-25s on leaving prison, and the £37 for the under-25s, often goes straight into the till at the nearest pub because the problems which brought people to prison in the first place are rarely addressed during their stay.

This is why the two see prisoners returning to Pentonville for the fourth or fifth time.

Keeping one person in prison for one week costs the taxpayer £730. Crime costs the country £60bn each year. The prison service costs £1.8bn a year to run.

“Maybe we’ve got our priorities wrong somewhere,” says Raffo. “Spending so much money locking people up and not even a fraction of that money on rehabilitation programs. Prisoners who leave here face a myriad of barriers from a humanitarian point of view.

“Five thousand prisoners are released from London prisons each year and from other institutions outside the capital releasing ex-prisoners back into London. The huge majority of them have nowhere to go.

“What a complete waste of human beings. We all pay if they are driven to return to crime.”

Ever since local authorities began transferring their housing stock to registered social landlords without ensuring provision of homes for the homeless, ex-offenders and other socially excluded groups, Raffo and Middleton say they have often come up against a brick wall when attempting to find beds, and eventually homes, for the people they work with.

Raffo recalls when he first took the job at Pentonville, writing to the London Housing Federation to ask which of their clients would be willing to offer beds for use by ex-prisoners, and being told that none were.

“I also visited RSLs,” he said, “hoping we would get a quid pro quo in that if one of their tenants is sent to prison, the first thing an RSL would be concerned with is continuing to be paid rent.

“We said we would ensure the housing benefit side of things continued to run smoothly if they would retain the tenancy for short-term prisoners, but retaining and finding accommodation for our clients has been a major problem.”

The St Mungo’s team is keen to point out their frequent successes which, considering the seemingly insurmountable bureaucracy, deserve praise indeed.

So far they have placed seven ex-prisoners into supported housing and saved the tenancies of more than 50 others despite them having been in prison for more than six months. Another 50 clients have been found hostel beds and eight have accessed accommodation via the homeless persons unit.

“The best kind of success,” says Raffo, “is when you meet people in the street who come up to you and say, ‘Remember me? I’m clean now,’ ‘I’m back in work,’ or ‘I’m back in touch with my family’.

“When people leave prison and don’t have a bed, we can only give them advice and help with their benefits.”

Raffo gives out his personal mobile number. If ex-prisoners stay in contact, the higher the chance is that the St Mungo’s team can help them.

This is particularly comforting given official statistics state that an ex-prisoner is 2.5 times more likely to re-offend if they do not have a home.

“RSLs could be more helpful,” says Raffo. “When I explored that avenue it was a closed door, so I didn’t waste my time.

“They may have had bad previous experiences housing ex-prisoners, but we need the right level of support.”

For the time being then, it seems that Oscar Wilde, who first conceived of writing the epic that became The ballad of Reading gaol during his stay at Pentonville in 1895, was right.

Pitiless and hard.