Rethinking preventing homelessness amongst prison leavers
| Author | Caroline Hughes,Sarah Dubberley,Caro Gorden,Mark Wilding,Kelly Lockwood,Iolo Madoc-Jones,Anya Ahmed,Karen Washington-Dyer |
| DOI | 10.1177/2066220318822245 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/2066220318822245
European Journal of Probation
2018, Vol. 10(3) 215 –231
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/2066220318822245
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejp
Rethinking preventing
homelessness amongst
prison leavers
Iolo Madoc-Jones
Wrexham Glyndwr University, UK
Caroline Hughes
Wrexham Glyndwr University, UK
Caro Gorden
Wrexham Glyndwr University, UK
Sarah Dubberley
Wrexham Glyndwr University, UK
Karen Washington-Dyer
Wrexham Glyndwr University, UK
Anya Ahmed
University of Salford, UK
Kelly Lockwood
University of Salford, UK
Mark Wilding
University of Salford, UK
Abstract
The Wales (Housing) Act 2015 introduced a preventative approach to addressing
homelessness that impacted on prison leavers in Wales. Since the same changes will
take effect in England from October 2018, this paper provides early insight into how
Corresponding author:
Iolo Madoc-Jones, Wrexham Glyndwr University, Wrexham, LL11 2AW, UK.
Email: i.m.jones@glyndwr.ac.uk
822245EJP0010.1177/2066220318822245European Journal of ProbationMadoc-Jones et al.
2019
Article
216 European Journal of Probation 10(3)
new preventative duties have been implemented in Wales. Drawing on interviews with
114 stakeholders and 75 prison leavers, we report that the promise associated with
a preventative agenda is presently not fully realised. We contend that resettlement
activity might be improved if it was better incentivised and facilitated inside the prison
wall. However, we also suggest the time has come for more radical options to be
pursued to address homelessness amongst prison leavers. We argue against short
prison sentences, which are so often causative of homelessness, and for providers of
probation services to be better incentivised and resourced to take a more active role
in meeting accommodation needs.
Keywords
Homelessness, prevention, prison leavers, resettlement
Background
The 2010 Green Paper, Breaking the Cycle, (Ministry of Justice, 2010) heralded what
was described as a new approach to tackling re-offending. It included a commitment to
tackle barriers to rehabilitation and led to the publication of Transforming Rehabilitation:
A Strategy for Reform (Ministry of Justice, 2013). Subsequent to this, the Offender
Rehabilitation Act 2014 (ORA) introduced changes to the way offenders would be super-
vised in custody and in the community. From June 2014, the Ministry of Justice split the
existing 35 Probation Trusts into a public sector National Probation Service (NPS) and
21 new Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). The NPS responsibilities were
redefined so that its staff would advise courts on sentencing and manage those offenders
who present a high risk of serious harm to others (or were Multi-Agency Public Protection
Arrangements (MAPPA) nominals). CRCs would supervise all other offenders who were
assessed as being at low or medium risk of causing serious harm to others.
CRCs were also contracted to undertake resettlement work at prisons within their
catchment areas. To facilitate such ‘Through the Gate’ (TTG) services, 70 of the 123
prisons in England and Wales were designated as resettlement prisons. In some of these
prisons, CRCs subcontracted provision of TTG services to voluntary organisations such
as Shelter. The intention was that in the last 3 months before release, prisoners would be
transferred to the resettlement prison in their local area and pre-release support and
supervision arrangements would be developed from that point (HMIP, 2017). Activity
would be focussed on the seven pathways to Reducing Re-Offending established by the
Government’s Reducing Re-offending National Action Plan: substance misuse; thinking
attitudes and behaviours; relationships and family; offending behaviour; finance and
debt; employment, training and education; and, finally, accommodation (Home Office,
2004). In this paper, we focus on how accommodation services to adults leaving prison
and facing homelessness have been developed since 2015.
Defining resettlement is not an easy task. As Raynor (2007) argues, the concept is
predicated on the disputable notion that prison leavers’ pre-custody experiences were of
being ‘settled’. For those for whom this was not the case, successful resettlement could
then amount to no more than being returned to an environment that is more supportive of
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