Prisoners: Accommodation on Leaving Prison

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, some time ago I was talking to a police officer in north London. He told me of an incident where a young thug had mugged an elderly woman and left her unconscious in the street—a deplorable crime. The young thug was caught, and the police officer then went to the young thug’s home. There he found, mid-morning, the young man’s mother spaced out on drugs. The place was in an abominable condition, and there were dog faeces everywhere. The police officer said to me, “That man will go to Feltham prison, and when he comes out he will go back to the same environment that he left”, so the cycle of crime will go on. Unless one avoids sending people back to those sorts of conditions, we will not get any further. In the case of the incident to which I just referred, who should be responsible for seeing that it does not happen? Who should see that the young man is not discharged from Feltham and sent back with nothing to help or support him or stabilise his life?

I was looking at various bits of paper that we received and found this quote:

“When someone leaves prison, we send them back onto the streets with 46 quid in their pockets. Back to the same streets. Back to the same groups of people. Back to the same chaotic life styles. Back to the same habits as before. So why are we surprised when so many commit crime all over again? It costs the economy at least £9.5 billion a year. It blights communities, and ruins lives. It is a national scandal”.

Who do you suppose said that? Any offers? The Minister will know. It was said at the Conservative Party conference last year by the right honourable Chris Grayling, the Secretary of State for Justice. It seems to me that in that one quote we have it all. Yes, it is a national scandal, but the question is: what are we doing about it? It is fairly clear that the cost for the country of dealing with people who have offended and go to prison is enormous. I wonder whether we should not go to more trouble to set off the cost of their imprisonment against housing and other support, which would then lessen the chance that they would go to prison. If we can get that right, we will be almost in a win-win position where we can stabilise and help people so that they do not fill up the prisons again.

When I was in the Commons in the 1980s, we were appalled when the prison population went above 43,000 or 44,000. We thought that the world had come to an end and that the system would no longer sustain itself. Now it is at least twice that number and is going up and up, and we do not seem to be as bothered now as we were then. That was some years ago, and there was still a Conservative Government, albeit a different sort of Conservative Government—I should say that the current Government is a coalition with a Conservative majority.

The Howard League has provided some useful information, as has Shelter. We desperately need more accurate statistics. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, why is it not the norm, when prisoners are discharged, that we do something directly about their housing in all instances? We need some statistics to demonstrate whether that is happening. How many people being discharged are going into accommodation and how many are left to fend for themselves in the circumstances that I described earlier in my example? My noble friend Lord Judd referred to prisoners being discharged. The Minister said that they get £46. Under the new system, they get no JSA for seven days. I do not think that prisoners discharged with £46 in their pocket will find it very easy to find somewhere to live, eat and survive for seven days before they get any social security benefit. Perhaps that has changed recently. I would like some assurance from the Minister that it has changed.

Some statistics from the Ministry of Justice were quoted, and they are a pretty savage indictment. There are also some interesting figures in a useful document from the Library with regard to Vision Housing, which deals with prisoners. It has some impressive statistics, based on a small sample, on the benefit of a lower reoffending rate when people are given housing on discharge from prison. The arithmetic is clear. We could be saving money, not wasting it, if we did more with housing so that people discharged from prison have some accommodation to go to. I am not saying that we should put them above everybody else in the community, but if we do not do this, all we will get are people reoffending at enormous cost to the public and to their local communities.