Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people entering prison were homeless before custody in each year since 2012.

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 – June 2018. The system for collecting this information did not exist prior to 2015 and so data for 2012 – 2015 is not available.

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.

The Government published its Rough Sleeping Strategy in August 2018, launching a £100 million initiative to reduce and ultimately eliminate rough sleeping across England. As part of this strategy, MoJ and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), will be investing approximately £6m in a pilot scheme to support ex-offenders secure suitable accommodation upon release; the pilots will operate in HMPs Pentonville, Bristol and Leeds. Staff in both Community Rehabilitation Companies and the National Probation Service continue to 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.