Life outside

It’s AN ordinary one-bedroom flat in a nondescript area of town but to Robert James* it represents the hope of a future free from prison and offending.

Released last year after a two-year stretch following a serious violent incident brought on by drug-induced psychosis, James left prison with one set of clothes and a £44 discharge grant. Homeless, he travelled to his probation office and was assessed by the council’s housing advice service and placed in emergency accommodation in a bail hostel.

It wasn’t perhaps the ideal location for a man deemed to be a high-risk offender, suffering from paranoia and with a history of class A drug abuse, alcohol use and a fear of crowds. “There were 25 guys in the hostel – all of them ex-offenders, druggies and all that lot,” he tells me as he shows me round his home. “When you have just got yourself clean, going back into that environment is just asking for trouble. There are drugs floating around like nobody’s business and it just takes a second to change your mind.”

James is actually one of the lucky ones. After five weeks a local charity managed to get him a supported placement in his own flat and after nine months there has been no return to the cycle of offending that has thus far been a feature of his life.

Others have been less fortunate. Evidence given to an ODPM committee on homelessness, which presented its findings two weeks ago, suggests ex-offenders were rehoused at a rate of just one a borough in the year after the Homelessness Act was updated in 2002 (HT 4 February, page11). Changes to the act introduced a priority need category for those vulnerable as a result of an institutional background and gave ex-prisoners the right to apply for vulnerability status.

But evidence presented to the ODPM committee suggests many authorities have been ignoring their responsibilities.

The public body responsible for young offenders, the Youth Justice Board, said some were ruling offenders intentionally homeless, regardless of the offence they had committed. And the Citizens’ Advice Bureau stated that some councils were deliberately using intentionality to avoid rehousing ex-offenders “if resources are tight”.

The key is the way many authorities have been interpreting another part of the Homelessness Act, which states that an individual can be deemed ineligible for housing if “he, or a member of his household, has been guilty of unacceptable behaviour serious enough to make him unsuitable to be a tenant of the authority”.

The committee sums up its response to this by saying: “The government made an explicit decision that vulnerable homeless ex-offenders should have priority and it is wrong that another part of the legislation should be exploited to prevent this happening.” Derek Kettlewell, service director for Foundation Housing Association, which works to house ex-offenders across Yorkshire and Humber, said that access to suitable living conditions was limited.

“I guess what we would say is that housing management is becoming more risk averse and social landlords are only looking for safe bets,” he said. “More and more housing agencies are asking for things such as lists of previous convictions.”

But he suggested that this kind of policy actually made communities less safe in the long term. “Having suitable accommodation is key for reducing reoffending. Having somewhere to live is essential in terms of public protection for high-risk offenders.

We have had people referred to us who are living in cars and in tents in extreme cases.”

The charity Revolving Doors, which deals with mental health issues and the criminal justice system, said ex-prisoners were being repeatedly ruled intentionally homeless by local authorities.

Nick O’Shea, the charity’s director of development, said: “During the [ODPM] scrutiny committee what was interesting for me, and it did come up time and time again, was that this was common practice. It is widespread. Ex-offenders are ending up pretty much homeless but there has not been a lot of research in terms of following it through, so the information is quite patchy.”

The figures that are available are explicit enough to suggest the scale of the problem. The prison population currently stands at 75,740 and the National Probation Service reveals that “nationally 40% of all prisoners are effectively homeless on release” with figures rising “disproportionately” if they have mental health problems.

Foundation Housing takes 2500 referrals of ex-offenders across Yorkshire and Humber a year but admits it has “nowhere near” the turnover of property to deal with that level of demand. Meanwhile crime reduction charity Nacro says its helpline takes 18,000 calls a year from prisoners, ex-offenders and their families – with 26% of those calls housing related.

The Local Government Association said it was “aware of the issues” surrounding housing ex-offenders and that it is working on a new strategy with the Home Office to deal with the issue. A spokesman said: “It is hoped that this strategy will include recommending a series of assessments during inmates’ time in prison and the continued tracking of their progress well after their release.”

As for James, nine months after his release, with his own flat and support workers, he has stayed off drugs and hasn’t reoffended. It’s early days yet but he says that for the first time in his life he has the security he has craved. “I want to try to achieve a normal life and that means no more drink, no drugs and no trouble and maybe getting a girlfriend and settling down. I’m a hell of a lot more stable now than I have ever been.”