Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of the prison population were (a) homeless and (b) living in temporary or insecure accommodation before entering prison in each year since 2014.

Table 1 below provides data on the number of prisoners that declared their accommodation status as of ‘No Fixed Abode’ on their reception into custody, April 2016 – March 2018. The data for 2014 and 2015 is not held.

Table 2 provides data on the number of prisoners who declared their accommodation as temporary/insecure on their reception into custody, April 2016 – March 2018. The data for 2014 and 2015 is not held.

Notes

1. The Basic Custody Screening Tool (BCS) is completed on entry to custody for all prisoners. It therefore will include a mix of those received into custody on remand and those sentenced from court. Using just the BCS, there is no way to determine which of those received into custody on remand were released un-convicted, therefore it is important to stress that this data covers prisoners, and can’t be used to describe offenders, as some of those counted will ultimately not have been found guilty of any offence.

2. The BCS Part 1 is completed by the prison with no input from a Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) as they complete Part 2 of the BCS.

3. These questions from the BCS Part 1 are recorded as per the prisoner’s answers and are not assessed.

4. The total number of prisoners shown is for the number of fully completed BCS Part 1s for each year, based on the Reception Date for each prisoner.

5. A proportion of prisoners will enter custody multiple times each year and for this PQ all responses have been included as a prisoner may provide different answers to these questions over time.

6. These figures have not been checked over or confirmed by the statistics team.

   Everyone should have a safe and suitable home to live; having somewhere to live gives people a stable platform from which to access health services, hold down a job and reduces the likelihood of them reoffending. Staff in both Community Rehabilitation Companies and the National Probation Service work together with local authorities and other providers of accommodation with the aim of ensuring all offenders under our supervision have accommodation especially when they are released from prison.