Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate his Department has made of the number of (a) male and (b) female offenders who have accommodation found for them on the first night out of prison by a community rehabilitation company; and if he will make statement.

As a result of our Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, all offenders now get targeted support before and after they leave prison to help them reintegrate into society. This includes working with local partners to help them find accommodation including, where necessary, emergency accommodation. Local authorities are statutorily responsible for working with and supporting an individual in order to assist them into securing settled accommodation.

We currently publish the performance of Community Rehabilitation Companies against Assurance Metric C, which measures the percentage of offenders who have settled accommodation on release from custody. The latest published information can be found in the ‘Community Performance Quarterly Management Information Release: April to June 2017’ on Gov.uk at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/community-performance-quarterly-mi-update-to-june-2017.

We are considering the development of a performance measure for accommodation on first night out of prison for introduction in 2018/19.