Channel 4 News covers our new FOI data
Our Chief Executive Christina Marriott was on Channel 4 news on 10 October discussing the new data obtained by Revolving Doors Agency from the Ministry of Justice [1] showing huge rise in risk of being homeless on release from prison.
The data reveals that:
- the known rates of rough sleeping on release from prison for people sentenced to less than 6 months has increased by 20 times in the last 18 month
- 1000 prisoners a month are released homeless and rough sleeping.
- the rates of homelessness including rough sleeping is high for the entire prison population (1 in 7) but most pronounced for people serving short prison sentences [2].
- 1 in 4 short sentenced prisoners are released homeless and rough sleeping. This figure is likely to be an underestimate as the Ministry of Justice does not know where a sixth of short-term prisoners are intending to sleep on their first night [3].
You can watch the news piece by Clare Fallon and the interview on Channel 4 news website: https://www.channel4.com/news/the-prisoners-left-homeless-after-their-release
[1] Homelessness rates on release from prison by quarter, October 2016 to March 2017: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/homelessness_on_release_from_pri#incoming-1240602
[2] The majority of people serving sentences of less than six months are in prison for non-violent offences. Some common offences that receive a short time in custody are theft and drug offences, linked to underlying problems such as poverty, homelessness, mental ill health and domestic violence.
[3] The data does show improvements in the Ministry of Justice’s knowledge of where people are spending their first night on release. However, the decrease in ‘unknown’ category has largely revealed that the vast majority are in fact homeless (3/4). We would assume this is the case for the rest of the unknown group.
