Only Sadiq Khan would privilege prisoners over the homeless
Sadiq Khan has chosen to wade into the debate over our wrecked criminal justice system. He’s been quiet on the subject since the conclusion of a “successful” Notting Hill Carnival last month that only resulted in the killings of two people, so it’s just in time.
This week’s mass early release of prisoners is an ideal pretext for some common sense on strategies to stop them returning there and London’s Mayor, a former criminal defence lawyer had a big idea – prison leavers should jump the housing queue, because this would stop them reoffending.
It’s a risky punt for the person overseeing the capital’s grotesque housing shortage. Around 175,000 Londoners are currently languishing in temporary accommodation in the city because there’s nowhere else for them to go. They include families with children, the elderly and people with disabilities stuffed into unsuitable and sometimes unsafe bedsits or hotels – a situation costing Westminister council £8,000 per household every month. Council staff will no doubt feel bemused at the prospect that those who harm others will have their needs elevated over genuinely vulnerable groups.
Khan is unfortunately right on the basics. Releasing prisoners to homelessness is one of the key drivers of reoffending. Exit from prison is the high point of vulnerability for recurrent criminality, though you’d be forgiven no sympathy after seeing inmates released early cavorting around outside HMP Wandsworth and Nottingham yesterday with bottles of bubbly.
Not content with housing people in jail conditions you’d hesitate to put livestock in, a national service stripped of any capacity to reform short term prisoners also marinates them in drugs and violence before propelling them out the door with no fixed abode – to community supervision that is already on its knees. Such prisoners, leaving jails with a tent and a sleeping bag if they are lucky, have reoffending rates running at close to twice that of those leaving to stable accommodation.
There is an acute lack of specialist probation hostel accommodation for the most risky offenders in London too, and as a recent BBC Panorama investigation found, not all of this is protecting the public adequately. There is undeniably a public safety concern in letting such people wander through London essentially unsupervised.
Reoffending means more victims. There are, we now know, offenders who have a background of domestic or sexual violence among the released because their index offence at the time emergency release came in was not connected crimes that would otherwise have excluded them. Plenty of people who have committed serious violence get prison sentences of less than four years.
Still, the ethical case for making such people wait at the back of the housing queue for others who play by the rules is very strong. The dehumanising experience of living in damp, mouldy multi-occupancy temporary accommodation often shared with children whose mental and physical health is suffering has been well documented. Why should innocent people be made to wait longer for what most of us take for granted – somewhere safe to live?
The Mayor’s true failings come from allowing this miserable housing war to form in the first place. Repeated targets on social housing for London have been set and then breached, with accusations of blatant sophistry featuring in the last election. Khan’s principal opponent Susan Hall accused him of conflating ground cleared for building with actually built homes to boast about “smashing” government targets: “You can’t live in holes in the ground”.
Protecting the public is the first duty of Government. The state must ensure that the prison and probation service are fundamentally reformed and properly resourced to keep citizens safe. For his part, the Mayor of London might be well advised to focus on actually starting to build houses to stop this morally dubious trade-off between criminals and homeless families.