Prisoners Freed Early Could Be Housed in Hotels, Says Justice Secretary

People seen outside HM Prison Brixton in London, England, on Sept. 10, 2024. Jeff Moore/PA Wire

Prisoners freed early to ease jail overcrowding could be housed in hotels, the justice minister has said.

Shabana Mahmood told the House of Commons on Tuesday that the emergency measures would only be required if there were not enough provision in the existing community accommodation and prisoners faced homelessness.

On Tuesday, around 1,700 inmates were released early, which is on top of the 1,000 prisoners normally released every week.

Mahmood said during a debate on prison capacity that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) was working with colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government to understand the impact on the housing sector releasing such a large number of prisoners all at once will have.

The justice secretary said: “As is the case any time a prisoner is released, probation staff are working hard to prepare release plans, including permanent and temporary accommodation. If an offender is at risk of homelessness on release, they will be housed in community accommodation.

“We expect to provide housing for the majority of offenders using existing provision, but, should there not be enough, I have authorised probation directors to make use of alternative arrangements, including budget hotels, as a temporary measure for the cases that we will see in the next few weeks.”

Later asked by the Conservative MP Edward Argar during another part of the Commons debate if her department had contacted any specific hotels for potential use, the minister replied that she had authorised probation directors to make appropriate accommodation provision if needed, but “at this point, it is not definite that it will be required.”

Mahmood confirmed that should that change, she would be transparent with the House, local authorities, and the public about where, how many, and when prisoners will be housed in hotels.

If the MoJ finds itself in a position where it will need to use hotel accommodation to put up released prisoners, it would come on top of the Home Office’s use of hotels to house illegal immigrants and asylum seekers, which has cost the British taxpayer millions of pounds a day.

Reoffending ‘Inevitable’

In July, Mahmood announced that the government would enact plans to cut the proportion of minimum time served for some inmates from 50 percent to 40 percent, in a bid to tackle prison overcrowding. Last Friday saw prison inmate figures hit another record high, with official figures showing 88,521 people behind bars.

A total of around 5,500 inmates are due to be released early under the scheme, with hundreds more to be freed early in October in the second stage.

On Tuesday the Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor said it was inevitable that some prisoners let free would reoffend and end up back in prison, due in part to the pressures that releasing so many prisoners in such a short space of time has on the prisons and the probation service, meaning that some former inmates would fall between the cracks and not get the right support they need to reintegrate into the community.

Taylor said that while the vast majority of those released would settle in to life on the outside, it was “inevitable that some of these prisoners will get recalled to custody and it’s inevitable that some of them will go out homeless.”

Prison Population to Grow

The HM Inspectorate of Prisons annual report, published on Tuesday, also warned of the “worrying shortfalls” in work to prepare inmates for early release.

Taylor’s report found that many prisons lacked meaningful activities for inmates to prepare them for life and work and that out of the 32 closed prison reports included in the annual analysis, 30 were rated poor or insufficiently good in terms of purposeful activity.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood (L), with Governor Sarah Bott at HMP Bedford in Bedfordshire, England, on July 12, 2024. Joe Giddens/PA Wire

The report also predicted that the prison population will grow by as much as 27,000 by 2028, and said that with the large increase, “it is unlikely to be possible to build enough new accommodation.”

The government has said current overcrowding was caused by the previous administration’s failure to build more prisons.

Mahmood has said the early release measures are temporary, “giving us time to set about long-term change in the prison system—building the prisons we need and driving down reoffending.”