Prisoners: Homelessness

(asked on 22nd May 2019) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners were recorded as being of No Fixed Abode on their arrival in custody in each prison in each year since 2010.


Answered by
Robert Buckland Portrait
Robert Buckland
This question was answered on 5th June 2019

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.

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, Ministry of Justice 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

Staff in both National Probation Service and Community Rehabilitation Companies 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.

The table below provides data on the number of prisoners that declared their accommodation status as of ‘No Fixed Abode’ on their reception into custody in each prison in each year since 2010. The data for 2014 is not held.

PRISONS

Year

2015

2016

2017

2018

Altcourse

489

601

859

1047

Bedford

549

537

197

373

Belmarsh

266

334

328

245

Birmingham

696

1062

1056

1036

Brinsford

95

87

90

126

Bristol

347

490

572

557

Bronzefield

338

736

1006

1022

Bullingdon

500

635

725

904

Cardiff

800

838

845

838

Chelmsford

523

520

508

484

Doncaster

701

605

623

683

Dovegate

192

292

525

560

Drake Hall

3

~

~

~

Durham

490

541

926

943

Eastwood Park

323

454

532

514

Elmley

606

880

1082

1115

Exeter

660

694

723

695

Forest Bank

878

1008

898

1252

Foston Hall

139

162

197

297

Glen Parva

57

65

12

Hewell

655

873

873

1027

High Down

631

531

283

333

Hollesley Bay

~

1

~

~

Holloway

336

60

~

~

Holme

248

291

128

~

Hull

620

642

670

661

Isle of Wight

21

42

32

31

Kirkham

~

~

~

1

Leeds

758

619

571

764

Leicester

179

226

253

348

Lewes

449

411

480

625

Lincoln

299

338

514

437

Liverpool

444

526

555

467

Low Newton

103

100

103

173

Manchester

547

687

580

449

New Hall

176

205

233

259

Norwich

451

561

647

553

Nottingham

759

988

923

1226

Parc

33

40

20

30

Pentonville

768

808

908

811

Peterborough

349

472

764

544

Peterborough Female

205

339

496

558

Preston

343

439

465

630

Stoke Heath

5

3

2

5

Swansea

314

316

365

346

Thameside

1229

1188

1463

1611

Wandsworth

1421

1682

1541

1423

Winchester

576

572

628

540

Woodhill

406

499

554

474

Wormwood Scrubs

1165

1103

1063

1096

Notes

1) The Basic Custody Screening Tool (BCS) is completed on entry to custody for all prisoners for each calendar year 2015-2018. 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) NFA on reception is determined where the answer to question B3.1 OR B3.4 on the BCS has been answered as ‘NFA’. If B3.1 is answered NFA then B3.4 isn’t made available to be answered, so it is not possible to double count NFA within the same BCS.

3) The two questions are: B3.1 – What was your accommodation status before prison & B3.4 – What type of housing did you live in before you came to prison

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

5) 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.

6) 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 figures have not been checked by statistician

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