In just four days James is facing the prospect of sleeping on the street. He was released from prison in August and given temporary probation accommodation in Somerset, but that is about to expire and he has nowhere to go. But literally nowhere wants to help – I have contacted MPs, solicitors, probation and the council.
I am quite tempted to just get myself recalled to prison because it is November. It is cold.” Charities and probation staff have said that prisoners are at risk of being released into street homelessness, exposing a “fatal flaw” in Andy Burnham’s plan to try to end rough sleeping in England by Christmas. With hundreds of prisoners being released early in England and Wales to try to ease prison overcrowding, there are concerns the number sleeping rough could start to rise just as the weather turns cold.
Tania Bassett, from Napo, the trade union for probation staff, said most housing options were already full after the early release of prisoners in October, and there were major concerns about how they would house the next tranche of releases on 10 November. But there is very little available and it is a big concern for our members.” She said one member had been trying to find housing for 10 people who were released on 1 October, and many staff reported feeling overwhelmed. Andy Keen-Downs, chief executive of the Prison Advice and Care Trust (Pact), said: “Every single day we are seeing men and women coming back to prison because they did not make their probation appointment.
And when we ask why, they say, ‘Well, I was sleeping on a bit of cardboard’. That is still the daily reality.” James said everyone he had met since living in the probation hostel had been released without an address, with many people sleeping in cars and on benches. He has a number of medical conditions, including epilepsy and PTSD, but has been denied temporary accommodation from Somerset council and has also been rejected from probation housing.
He has two electronic tags – a GPS tracker that needs to be charged daily and an alcohol monitoring tag that needs to remain connected to a communication device. Nobody has given me a satisfactory answer,” he said. The government has introduced a “presumption of electronic tagging” for offenders released early, but Bassett said this could not happen if there was a high level of homelessness.
Analysis by Pact showed the number of prisoners released into rough sleeping has increased by 130% in three years, rising from 6,040 in 2022-23 to 14,360 in 2025-26. Rough sleeping is now recorded in about one in seven prison releases, compared with around one in 10 three years ago, and the proportion of releases recorded as “no fixed abode” (homelessness and rough sleeping combined) has risen from 11.3% to 15.9%. Enver Solomon, CEO of the social justice charity Nacro, said he recently visited a prison that was aiming to ensure 84% of prisoners had a roof on release.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
