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Ex-Prisoners, SAAP, Housing and Homelessness in Australia

Report part four: conclusions and recommendations

Overall conclusions

Ex-prisoners face multiple social disadvantages

The existing literature and the research undertaken for this project clearly show that the ex-prisoner population suffers from multiple social disadvantages and that these disadvantages can have compounding effects. The literature clearly shows too that the homeless population also experiences significant social disadvantage. What emerges from the current paper is that, in terms of social disadvantage, the homeless population and the prisoner and ex-prisoner populations exhibit many of the same disadvantaged characteristics as each other. This suggests that the pathways into homelessness and pathways into imprisonment not only frequently run in parallel but also frequently intersect and converge.

The experience of homelessness can exacerbate existing deficits in areas such as employment and can contribute to the development or worsening of mental health problems and physical ill-health. Homeless people may face discrimination when seeking accommodation or employment. Being homeless can negatively impact on family and other relationships and lead to a person becoming socially isolated.

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Not only do ex-prisoners share many of the disadvantage characteristics of the homeless population, they frequently have these to a greater extent than the homeless population. The experience of imprisonment can have very similar effects to the experience of homelessness. Ex-prisoners face stigmatisation and discrimination in relation to finding accommodation and employment. Compared to people who may be homeless but not have an offending history, ex-prisoners may encounter more negative responses from landlords, real estate agents, employers or others approached for assistance. While a non-offending homeless person may be seen by a landlord or employer as 'down on their luck' and deserving assistance, the ex-prisoner is more likely to be seen as the agent of their own fate, not deserving of help or trust, and possibly as a threat. The effects of this discrimination can have negative impacts in terms of depression and loss of self-esteem and in some cases may contribute to re-offending. Many ex-prisoners feel in any case they are somehow separate from the rest of society, even without having this 'proven' to them through discrimination.

Spending time in prison can be a traumatising experience for many people and the stresses of life in prison can contribute to the development of psychiatric and psychological difficulties. A person's offending behaviour and imprisonment can have negative impacts for families, partners and friends and can contribute to family breakdown.

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While in prison, a person is likely to encounter violence and may themselves become a victim or have to adopt violent behaviours as a survival mechanism. Prisoners live in conditions that can create deficits in basic living skills, affect their capacity to make decisions or cope with difficult situations and reduce their ability to interact in socially appropriate ways. Institutionalisation can arise as a set of responses and behaviours that are conducive to prison life but can be counter-productive to life in the community. Being in prison can expose a person to physiological health problems such as infectious diseases or exacerbate existing conditions.

An individual who is both an ex-prisoner and is homeless, or has experienced both, is likely to face cumulative disadvantages with the negative effects of imprisonment and homelessness compounding each other. Where such a person has deficits not only in areas such as employment and education, but also has psychiatric, intellectual or physical disability, or substance abuse problems or the results of institutionalisation, they are likely to find themselves amongst the most disadvantaged members of our society.

The social disadvantages faced by ex-prisoners are of a kind that leaves them vulnerable to homelessness

The close concordance between types of social disadvantage seen in the homeless population and those seen in the ex-prisoner population suggests that at various points in time the two populations are likely to cross and merge, and this proves to be the case.

These same disadvantages can leave ex-prisoners particularly vulnerable to homelessness. An individual may have come to prison from an unsuitable accommodation situation, or may have had suitable accommodation which is lost while in prison. Needless to say, society continues to move along while a person is removed from it and isolated in prison. An individual's home, job, family and friends may all be lost to them while they are in custody.

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On release from prison, many people will still have family or friends they can turn to, or they may have been able to retain their housing. Many others will leave prison with nowhere to go to. All face returning to a society and community from which they have been separated, to which they may have never been fully attached even before prison, and which may have changed while they have been away. All face having to adapt to a world and a way of living that are very different from what they experienced in prison, where the rules are not the same, where daily living requires making decisions and exercising responsibilities which may have become completely foreign and where the kinds of behaviours that ensure success and survival inside lead to conflict and rejection outside.

Those individuals who leave prison without somewhere to go face the prospect of trying to find a decent place to live despite having barely enough money for rent in a cheap private hotel or boarding house. Having set up in such a residence, the ex-prisoner may well find that the living conditions are not much better than they experienced in prison, and they may be surrounded by stresses, pressures and temptations that are more conducive to drug-use and offending than they are to the difficult task of settling into society.

More than likely the ex-prisoner will not be able to afford to rent a house or unit -- even if they could find an affordable one -- and will not have enough money for bond, rent in advance or to having the electricity, gas and telephone connected. Even with enough money, the ex-prisoner faces an uphill battle trying to convince a landlord or real estate agent they are a good tenancy prospect, against a background that likely includes no rental history or a poor history, no rental references and where the individual's last address was prison. The individual may even have been 'blacklisted' as a bad tenant, whether or not this is warranted.

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Chances are the ex-prisoner will face the same kinds of problems trying to get a job. On top of the stigmatisation and discrimination, the individual may not have any good working experience to draw on, may be lacking in job-ready skills and may have had limited education and no qualifications. Without a stable home the ex-prisoner may face problems making contact with employers and presenting appropriately for interviews. Not having a job makes it that much harder to get a home; not having a home makes it that much harder to get a job.

Those who do leave prison with somewhere to go are not always better off. Many people will leave prison and stay with family or friends, but these arrangements often do not last and the ex-prisoner may soon find they have lost both their home and their support.

Faced with having no proper home, no job, no support and suffering under the strains of trying to settle into the community while possibly dealing with mental illness, intellectual disability, poor health or any number of other problems, many ex-prisoners will look to find a comfort zone within this turmoil. This may mean returning to a familiar place, perhaps where they previously lived and where old friends are. This may be the same place where the person's offending behaviour took place and the old friends may be the same old friends who helped lead the ex-prisoner into offending, maybe into drug use. A return to familiar places and associations may also mean a return to familiar behaviours. In other cases the ex-prisoner's comfort zone may be directly in the realm of drug or alcohol abuse, or abuse may simply be a way of coping. Drug and alcohol abuse and offending behaviour, or simply wasting limited income on 'partying', are not conducive to establishing stable and secure accommodation or establishing an ordered life. For a significant number of ex-prisoners drug and alcohol abuse are a direct contributor to homelessness and re-offending.

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Homelessness makes a person vulnerable to imprisonment, or re-imprisonment

Homeless people are arrested and incarcerated at a rate that far exceeds the domiciled population. Being homeless exposes a person to a heightened risk of offending, through peer pressure, temptation or necessity. Certainly not all homeless people commit offences, but on occasions some homeless people will offend merely to survive, for food or the money to buy a roof over their head.

This problem may be even worse for ex-prisoners. The disadvantages faced by ex-prisoners are of a kind that leaves them at a heightened risk of being re-imprisoned. The cumulative effects of financial strains, social isolation and disempowerment, together with poor social interaction skills and possibly substance abuse can place people in situations where they may be tempted or pressured to offend. Having offended, been caught and incarcerated can in some cases have a labelling effect which further heightens the risk.

A number of ex-prisoners interviewed for this study spoke of offending for survival and some spoke of offending for the sole purpose of being arrested and returned to prison. For these individuals, their homelessness and the strains that came with it were such that being in prison presented a far better option than trying to survive outside.

It is surely a condemnation of our response to both post-release integration with the community, and addressing the problems of homelessness, that wilful abuse of the law becomes a person's only perceived means of accessing safe and secure accommodation.

The literature review (Part 1) and the interviews with SAAP service providers and ex-prisoner clients (Parts 2 and 3) in the current study make it apparent that stable and secure housing are vital to an ex-prisoner's prospects of a successful return to the community. It has been consistently shown that ex-prisoners who do not experience significant post-release accommodation problems are more likely to be able to adopt a lifestyle that is free of offending behaviour and substance abuse and are relatively unlikely to return to prison. There can be no doubt that housing is a fundamental determinant of post-release success.

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The homelessness experiences of ex-prisoners are essentially consistent across time and place

One particularly notable aspect of this study has been the close concordance between what the literature says ex-prisoners experience and what the ex-prisoner clients, and staff, of SAAP-funded agencies say they experience. In one sense this is not surprising, nor is it particularly revealing. Assuming each of the studies has had a reasonable amount of validity this should be the case.

The information gained from the qualitative interviews done for this study is useful though because it not only confirms what the literature says, but it places it in a local and contemporary context. In doing so it adds to the relatively small body of literature that addresses Australian ex-prisoners and their accommodation problems.

What is particularly interesting too is how much similarity there is between, for example, the problems faced by ex-prisoners in studies done in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, and the problems faced by ex-prisoners in Australia at the end of 2003. Times and society may have changed and many research studies and policy developments may have come and gone, but overall ex-prisoners do not seem any better off today than they did 30 years ago.

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The private housing profile has changed in ways that make it harder for people to avoid homelessness

One reason why the circumstances of released prisoners may not have improved is that any gains made through better correctional programs or efforts in the welfare and accommodation sectors may have been off-set by external changes in the societal environment.

Perhaps the most significant change affecting the accommodation prospects of ex-prisoners and others has been rising property values, particularly in inner-city and neighbouring areas. This has affected the lower-end, cheap and affordable private hotels and boarding houses that have often been the only resort of those on very limited incomes. Rising property values in recent times have seen the sites of much of the affordable accommodation redeveloped, often to make way for commercial or high-end residential properties. In other cases the establishment itself has been renovated and refurbished, usually moving it into much higher cost brackets.

Often this redevelopment is the result of 'gentrification' where either through market forces or deliberate local government planning the character of inner urban areas has been changed, moving them from areas predominantly consisting of light industry and other commercial premises or older housing stock into up-market residential and commercial properties. Where these changes are occurring due to state or local government planning, one cannot exclude the possibility that conscious efforts are being made to move homeless people away from inner-city areas as a way of improving the city's appearance to enhance tourism and other commercial input.

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The phenomenon of changed urban use and development profiles is being observed not only in capital cities but also in regional areas. In the one regional area covered in parts two and three of this study, the profile of the town was being gradually altered and an area adjacent to the city centre which once held many cheap boarding houses now consists of new residential housing, some of it in the multi-million dollar bracket.

There has tended to be an accumulation of these establishments in inner-city areas and there tends to be an accumulation of homeless people and often of support agencies in these same areas. Whether the affordable accommodation arose in inner-city areas because of the accumulation of prospective residents in these areas, or whether the converse is true, many of the establishments have now gone from these areas. The people needing them remain nonetheless.

Rising property values in most areas throughout recent years has led to a significant increase in median house prices, making home ownership impossible for many people. At the time of writing, a number of media sources were reporting that the median housing price in Sydney had risen to $500,000. Clearly a sizeable proportion of the community cannot afford to accrue the deposit and costs involved in such a purpose or secure and maintain a mortgage of the size necessary to buy into this market. The segment of the community that is gradually becoming alienated from home ownership includes many people who have never been to prison, have never had a problem with employment or accommodation and do not suffer mental illness, disabilities, substance abuse problems, poor education, family breakdown, discrimination or stigmatisation. Perhaps not surprisingly, very few ex-prisoner clients of SAAP agencies talk optimistically about buying their own home.

Leaving aside the dim prospect of home ownership, high property values, coupled with very low tenant-vacancy rates, have lead to an increase in private rental prices, pushing them further out of the reach of those on limited incomes. Many ex-prisoners interviewed for the current study, and those in other Australian studies, see themselves as being permanently cut off from the private rental market.

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The public housing profile has changed in ways that make it harder for people to avoid homelessness

Homeless people are also being affected by another major change, which is a consequence of not only increased property values and changing urban profi les, but of changes in government policy and resource allocations. Many ex-prisoners and staff interviewed for this and other studies talk of decreases in public housing stock and how difficult it is for anyone, except those in exceptionally dire circumstances, to access public housing. With private housing becoming almost unattainable many people on low incomes are becoming reliant on public or community housing and are finding this more and more difficult to secure.

Agency staff find it increasingly difficult to access exit points for their clients and often attribute this to a decreasing public housing stock. It is apparent from various sources that some state governments are reducing their housing stock. In some cases this is because they need the revenue from property sales to fund their core business, or because they do not have the money to maintain ageing stock. In both circumstances increased property values may be a major contributor to these decisions, along with changes in government funding and policy directions. Moves to replace the provision of public housing with greater access to rent assistance do not necessarily help those in positions of housing difficulty who are not in a position to rent even with financial assistance.

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Certainly public housing is not ideal in many respects and some public housing areas are beset with problems like drug and alcohol misuse and may have very high crime rates. At the same time, studies show that public housing can engender a strong sense of community among residents. Within the present study, many ex-prisoners see public housing not just as their only real housing goal, but also as a desirable outcome for themselves. The evidence suggests that those able to access long-term public housing have good prospects for remaining in the community, free from reoffending and imprisonment.

There are positive signs that developments in community housing are off-setting public housing reductions in some areas, but the extent of growth in the community housing area is not known. It may be that an appreciation of this growth has been assessed, but investigating that question is beyond the scope of this study. There is room for a much clearer picture of the present and future state of community housing to be developed, if it has not been, and for this to be used to inform the future of housing availability for those on low incomes.

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Ex-prisoners need housing that is appropriate in type and location

Ex-prisoners' offending history and associations may make it difficult or inappropriate to house them in certain locations and areas. Research shows that the ex-prisoner population typically comes from, and usually returns to, a relatively small number of areas. These are areas typically marked by very high levels of socio-economic disadvantage. Returning to these areas and communities is likely to bring ex-prisoners into contact with the same kinds of problems that may have contributed to their offending before. It can be very hard for someone to make positive changes in their life within such an environment.

It is clear from the literature and the interviews done for this study that a return to 'old haunts' and contact with past friends and acquaintances can be a major risk factor for re-offending or substance abuse. During the interviews many ex-prisoners talked of the likelihood or actuality of them re-offending once they went back to certain areas and began associating with old friends. Some ex-prisoners who were trying to make a success of their return to the community were adamant about not getting caught by the past in this way and some were very anxious about having to move back to areas they had lived in before.

While for all homeless people past associations can have negative consequences, this appears to be heightened in the case of ex-prisoners, given their previous involvement in offending, and can present a major challenge for accommodation providers. This is particularly so in regional areas where accommodation options may be more limited. Agencies need to be mindful of these problems when trying to access accommodation and need to be sensitive to the wishes of clients in this regard. Given limited accommodation options in any case, having to avoid moving clients to certain areas will not make the task of service provision any easier.

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Stable and secure housing is vital to a successful return to the community for many ex-prisoners

Having a home is critical if many ex-prisoners are going to have any real prospect of successfully returning to the community. Research conducted both in Australia and overseas, including the study incorporated into this report, show that having access to appropriate accommodation can provide the platform which allows ex-prisoners to begin making the changes and adaptations necessary for adjusting to life in the general community. Research shows that those with stable and secure housing have lower rates of re-offending and re-incarceration than those who experience homelessness or accommodation difficulties. SAAP agency clients interviewed for the current study told of their previous failures to change their lives and how housing, and support, were now letting them put the past behind them and work towards the future.

Without appropriate housing a person's ability to find employment, access assistance and services, address substance abuse issues or other aspects of offending behaviour, maintain self-esteem and start to think of him or herself as a 'normal' member of society can be severely undermined. Without appropriate housing it can be almost impossible for some ex-prisoners to begin putting order into lives characterised by chaos. Stable housing, the research shows, engenders more stable lives. This stability is likely to contribute to a reduction in recidivism, which can in turn provide multiple benefits to society.

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Support is critical

Certainly not all ex-prisoners will become homeless, nor will they all re-offend. Many are able to get on successfully with their return to the community. They may achieve this with or without support, but having good and appropriate support emerges clearly from this study as absolutely vital to a successful return to the community for many ex-prisoners. Good and appropriate support can be the linchpin that makes housing attainable and lets positive change take place.

One aspect of good and appropriate support in the current context is support that is available at the point of release from prison. The first days and weeks -- possibly even the first hours -- after release are critical. Even a very short period without support can lead to some ex-prisoners falling into behaviours or associations that can impair their prospects of a successful return to the community. One day of 'partying' or spent living on the streets can undermine all positive intentions the ex-prisoner may have had. While support will not guarantee that these problems will be averted, having a place to stay and professional guidance to steer an individual's decisions can make a fundamental difference.

To be able to have support in place at the point of release support services, including supported accommodation agencies, need to be able to work with potential clients some time before release. Accessing serving prisoners allows the agency to establish trust and rapport, make assessments of the client's wants and needs and begin to make sure support resources such as beds and workers are available. From the prisoner's perspective establishing contact before release provides confidence and a measure of surety that offers of assistance are genuine and they have something to go to when released. This allows the prisoner to begin planning and preparing for release and approach their return to the community with more optimism and less trepidation.

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For relevant agencies to be able to provide in-prison support they need to have adequate resources to meet assessed needs, in the form of trained staff and infrastructure such as accommodation beds. Agencies will need to have access to funding that provides for these kinds of resources.

In the present context, good and appropriate support also means support that is tailored to the individual's needs and which demonstrates an understanding and appreciation of the individual's circumstances and how they got there. It means recognising that a person may face particular difficulties through having been in prison, that these may make the person hard to work with, and understanding the importance of not condemning the person for this. It means support that is available when it is needed, particularly in the first days and weeks, even the first hours, after a person is released from prison. It means knowing what the individual client needs and being able to provide it through a range of flexible options that reflect changing and developing circumstances.

Many clients in the current survey felt there was much to be gained from ex-prisoners providing advice and assistance to other ex-prisoners on a peer support basis. This suggests that there is a strong potential for positive results to be obtained from funding to assist the development of ex-prisoner support services utilising a peer support model. At the same time, it is clear that those agencies who participated in this study and who are providing intensive support targeted at ex-prisoners are achieving very positive outcomes for many individual clients. This leads to the conclusion that the most important component of the worker-client relationship for ex-prisoners is not necessarily shared experience, but shared understanding and a shared appreciation of experiences and needs.

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Good support is not restricted to support provided by community agencies. Many ex-prisoners receive support and assistance from their families, including the direct provision of accommodation. Ex-prisoners who have support from family, as well as friends and intimate partners, have better prospects for a successful return to the community than those who have lost or become alienated from these personal supports. Even where an ex-prisoner needs support with some aspects of their lives, personal support can make it more likely that professional support will have positive effects.

It is genuinely unfortunate that, for some prisoners and ex-prisoners, the strain placed on families through offending behaviour and imprisonment can lead to family support being withdrawn. For others, who may have come from abusive or dysfunctional childhood experiences, positive family support may have never been available. Given the relationship between family support and a relative likelihood of freedom from both re-offending and homelessness, any interventions that correctional agencies, SAAP agencies or others can make to help prisoners and ex-prisoners maintain or repair family relationships stand to produce multiple benefits.

Addressing problems of homelessness in ex-prisoners requires special interventions

One theme that emerges from the present study and those before is that ex-prisoners with accommodation problems have needs that separate them in some ways from others with accommodation problems. As discussed, ex-prisoners have multiple and perhaps compounding levels of disadvantage. The effects of institutionalisation may make them difficult to work with, perhaps overly hostile and manipulative or subservient and easily exploited. Responding to these needs requires special skills and perhaps special training, and risks negative reactions from others, including other clients, who may see any support given to ex-prisoners as being unwarranted and undeserved. For an agency that provides accommodation, having ex-prisoner clients may impact on resources because many people do not want to share a home with ex-prisoners, including other ex-prisoners.

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It had been hoped at the outset of this project that the present study would provide some insight into whether ex-prisoner clients have a greater impact on service providers than other clients, and whether assisting ex-prisoners took away from the ability to provide services to others. Such insight was not able to be gained from this study, mainly because of the profile of the agencies that participated. These were agencies who for the most part targeted ex-prisoners and in any case saw ex-prisoner clients as deserving at least the same level of services as others. While staff talked of some impacts, and some of the ways working with ex-prisoners was difficult, none of them saw that this detracted from their service provision. For some agencies these difficulties were at the very core of their service.

It is possible (and indeed likely) that other agencies, especially those not targeting ex-prisoners, are experiencing greater impacts and there is still a need to explore this question with a larger and more broadly representative sample of SAAP agencies. Further examination will be hampered by the make-up of SAAP administrative data,

which does not allow ex-prisoner clients to be easily identified within the broader client population. Currently the only question in the administrative data which comes close to identifying ex-prisoner clients is the question about where clients were living immediately prior to attending the SAAP agency. This question:

The fact that many ex-prisoners do not experience accommodation problems until some time after release, and the reluctance of many ex-prisoners to disclose their history unless they have to, means that the ability to identify SAAP agency clients (i.e. proportions of ex-prisoner versus other types of client) from administrative data is greatly hampered.

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Addressing problems of homelessness in ex-prisoners requires collaborative relationships that must include correctional services

One of the fundamental difficulties with undertaking interventions for prisoners and ex-prisoners is the question of where responsibilities fall. Housing assistance for people being released from prison does not fall neatly within the responsibility of any particular government agency or sector. Serving prisoners are the responsibility of state and territory correctional services and agencies responsible for housing and welfare services do not exercise any particularly responsibility for them. Once released, unless an ex-prisoner is still serving a sentence under parole supervision, they are no longer the responsibility of corrective services. Even parole supervision may be the responsibility of an agency separate from corrective services. Planning post-release housing and support, and managing the transition from prison to the community can be impossible unless responsibilities can bridge the gap between pre-release and post-release.

Corrective services security considerations can also make it difficult for prisoners to access outside agencies, and for outside agencies to access prisoners. Prisoners are necessarily restricted from contact with the outside community in many ways, including strict limits on telephone calls and visits. Correctional institutions must place very tight restrictions on who is able to enter the institutions and for what purpose. Overall, to a large extent the role of corrective services is focused on maintaining safe and secure custody and duty of care considerations arising from that. Corrective services resources must always be very carefully targeted with the appropriate balance struck between 'maintenance' costs such as security and infrastructure and 'intervention' costs such as programs and education.

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In the face of this, it can be very difficult for other government agencies or outside service providers to make contact with serving prisoners and begin providing meaningful support to them. It can also be difficult for those outside to gain an understanding of an individual prisoner's needs and issues, and practical considerations such as when a prisoner is due for release, without cooperation and assistance from correctional staff.

Policy development in the area of homelessness increasingly relies on collaborative arrangements and partnerships between government and community agencies. It is vital that corrective services be fundamentally involved in any policy development aimed at addressing homelessness among ex-prisoners. Given the relationship between homelessness, offending and re-incarceration, corrective services should be considered a key stakeholder in most aspects of homelessness policy. Involving corrective services will help to balance security and access needs and will allow policy development to be informed by a greater understanding of the particular needs of ex-prisoners and the particular issues they face. There will always be a difficulty for SAAP given that the Commonwealth does not have any responsibility for operational corrections, but involving state and territory correctional agencies at the right point of the policy development cycle should help to overcome this.

During interviews with ex-prisoner clients many spoke of the important role that parole or community corrections officers played in helping them re-establish in the community. Community corrections officers sometimes carry a difficult role, having to balance compliance with behavioural management support and welfare-type support. The very important role they can play in helping ex-prisoners avoid post-release homelessness, with other aspects of a successful return to the community, needs to be recognised. There is some scope for greater collaboration between those in the housing sector and those in corrective services to more explicitly integrate the part played by community corrections officers with the roles of others involved in addressing ex-prisoner homelessness. These would need to be done in a way that does not compromise the compliance and supervision aspects of the community corrections officer's role.

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Interventions to address homelessness in ex-prisoners must begin at the point of reception into prison

Adopting a throughcare approach, a prisoner's post-release accommodation should begin to be addressed from the time they are received into the prison.

Research has identified certain categories of prisoners who are most likely to experience post-release homelessness, including:

During the process of induction and classification an assessment should be made of the likelihood the prisoner will experience accommodation difficulties after release. The initial assessment process should consider the prisoner's accommodation history and whether interventions need to be made to retain existing accommodation, assist the prisoner to resolve problems such as rent arrears or ensure the person can stay on public housing waiting lists. The assessment should also consider other issues potentially impacting on housing, such as family situation, employment prospects, behavioural or life skills issues and disabilities that may generate special housing needs. Jurisdictions may have to develop or adopt a specialist assessment tool, or modify existing tools, to gather this information. There may a role for the Commonwealth, through SAAP, in assisting with the development of standard assessment tools for homelessness.

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Assessments made at the point of reception should then flow-through to forms of support such as case management, welfare and education within the prison, and be used to facilitate contact with outside agencies.

Selected corrective services staff involved in the induction and classification process should be trained in identifying prisoners who are relatively likely to face accommodation problems on their release. This will include prisoners who do not necessarily fall into one of the above categories but whose circumstances are likely to result in post-release homelessness. Information management systems within the correctional system must be able to support this identification process.

Welfare and other appropriate staff within the correctional system should begin putting in place interventions for these prisoners from the time they are received into the system. The nature of the intervention will depend on the individual prisoner's circumstances and the length of their sentence (or anticipated length of their remand period) but possible interventions may include:

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Those in prison for a short time may be worse off than those staying longer

A theme strongly emerging from the literature, from interviews with staff of SAAP agencies and from interviews with ex-prisoner clients is that people who spend relatively short periods of time in prison, whether on remand or serving short sentences, may have worse post-release outcomes than those serving longer sentences. For the most part this also applies to those who may have served medium-length sentences but have been released with no post-release supervision.

A very significant proportion of prisoners serve sentences of 12 months or less, many of these serving less than six months or even less than three months. People held on remand may be in custody for several months and then released, usually because they are acquitted or because they are convicted and released with time in remand adjudged to be time served off their sentence. During the period from arrest to release many prisoners will lose any stable housing they had before being incarcerated. Caught up in the process of arrest, incarceration and court appearances, many people will not be able to put arrangements in place to secure their home or possessions. They will usually not be able to maintain rent payments and may be evicted. Their property may be confiscated or stolen. While it may have been possible for those in public housing to make arrangements to maintain their tenancy, many prisoners will not be aware of this or not know how to put these arrangements in place.

Many prisoners will experience a breakdown of relationships with family, friends and perhaps intimate partners during a short period in custody. They may lose the support and trust of families. Friends may turn away from them. Partners may find the strain of coping too much. In some cases relationship breakdowns may mean that previous or possible future accommodation may no longer be offered. In other cases, partners or relatives may not be able to sustain housing that had previously been shared with the prisoner, and accommodation may be lost in this way.

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Those held in prison for longer terms will experience the same problems, often to a greater degree. The difference is that those held for longer are much more likely to be able to access forms of support and assistance that short-term prisoners are simply unable to access. Those released after longer periods will usually be able to access programs, information and other assistance during their imprisonment. They may even be able to take part in dedicated pre-release programs and be able to secure support from external agencies before release. Those serving longer periods will usually be released on parole, under supervision, and having stable and secure accommodation pre-arranged will be a condition of that parole.

People serving short sentences or those held on remand often are not able to access programs, whether they be education, behaviour management or those assisting with post-release issues. Prisoners may have to wait for a long time to access programs and those serving longer periods may be given priority or deemed more deserving or needy. Prison routines only allow limited time to take part in programs or see welfare staff. Remandees may be released from court without any plans or arrangements in place, as may sentenced prisoners released without parole supervision. Neither group is likely to have received much assistance with addressing the behaviour or circumstances that led to them being in custody.

There would seem to be scope for the development of programs tailored to the post-release needs of short-term prisoners. These would aim to help prisoners access forms of support and avoid returning to the kinds of behaviour that perhaps led to them being imprisoned. Programs would need to assist released prisoners to adjust quickly from being a prisoner to being a member of the community, and would assist the ex-prisoner to cope with breakdowns in family and other relationships. As it could be difficult to provide such a program within existing prison routines, a dedicated period of time may need to be established just before release to provide such a program. Additional resources would also be needed, particularly taking into account the very high numbers of prisoners being released on a continuing basis. The difficulties of altering prison routines, establishing the necessary assessment processes and allocating the very substantial resources needed cannot be underestimated. At the same time, these difficulties must be balanced with the problems raised by so many prisoners re-offending and returning to imprisonment and with the benefits to be gained from reducing this level of recidivism.

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If establishing programmatic support for prisoners serving short sentences is difficult, doing the same for those on remand is even harder, though just as necessary. Prisoners on remand have not been tried or convicted and must be treated as innocent. It is very difficult to plan interventions for remandees as it cannot be known with any certainty how long they will be held or whether they will be convicted or sentenced.

Given the many difficulties encountered with providing programmatic support, the development of more passive forms of assistance, such as printed information, may be more appropriate. There might be a need for this to be produced in audio form for prisoners without literacy skills.

We need to know more before we can tackle some of the major problem areas

The literature and the present study allow us a good understanding of some aspects of ex-prisoner homelessness, but there is still a need for more work to be undertaken to yield a clearer understanding of some aspects of the issue.

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Ex-prisoners' use of SAAP services

A key knowledge area, which can potentially degrade any efforts to improve the provision of SAAP services to ex-prisoners, is that SAAP data does not allow for a clear assessment of how many ex-prisoners are accessing SAAP services.

As discussed in Part one, only a proportion of prisoners who seek SAAP services do so immediately after leaving prison. Many have other accommodation available for a time, through family, friends or independently. An ex-prisoner may have accommodation straight after prison but lose it, perhaps because of arguments with parents over problems the person is facing trying to cope with being back in the community. As a SAAP client, this person may report their parent's home as their last residence and identify the family problems or perhaps substance abuse problems as their reason for seeking assistance. This will obscure the fact that the essence of the problem is the client's imprisonment and offending history.

We still do not know much about the way in which ex-prisoners make use of SAAP services and whether the special difficulties and needs that ex-prisoners bring are impacting on SAAP services.

To address these issues properly, two research questions can be identified:

These are two separate research questions. The first asks about the percentage of post-release prisoners that turn to SAAP services for assistance. Answering this question would provide valuable information about anticipated levels of usage by ex-prisoners. On the basis that a particular number of prisoners are released each year (and particular information about risk factors for homelessness), estimates of demand for SAAP services could be gauged which would allow the SAAP sector to prepare for this demand. Answering this question, however, would require interviewing prisoners about their intentions prior to release from prison (or very shortly afterward if possible) as it becomes very difficult to track prisoners upon release from prison.

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The second question asks about the percentage of all SAAP agency clients who are ex-prisoners. It is not possible to determine this percentage from the SAAP administrative data, hence, answering this question would either require this information to be somehow collected in future collections, or require that a representative sample of SAAP agencies are interviewed about their ex-prisoner clients in comparison with other types of client. If the sample of agencies were truly representative, including on the basis of regional distributions, an estimate of the proportion of clients at a national level who are post-release could be calculated. The benefit of being able to answer this question is that the SAAP sector would then have a good idea of the level of demand for their services which is directed toward ex-prisoner clients (and any special/additional needs associated with this demand).

In the current study neither of these questions was able to be addressed, due to both time and resource constraints. The above questions essentially each comprise much larger projects than that able to be undertaken in this study. These constraints in large part determined the methodology used in this study in relation to the interviews with stakeholders and ex-prisoner clients. The profile of the participating agencies was such that these agencies primarily targeted ex-prisoner clients. Hence the impact that this client group has on other client groups was not really relevant to these agencies. While there were clients interviewed who were not receiving intensive, individualised support, they also were not able to clearly inform this question. It seemed that many of those interviewed had never given much consideration to which agencies they were getting assistance from and would make use of services when and where they needed them to address specific needs. Most did not exhibit clear patterns of use, or did not indicate enough recollection to allow these patterns to be discerned.

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The need to gather this information remains as greater information about ex-prisoners' use of SAAP would have clear benefits from an information and research point of view, and could lead to service improvements. Being able, for instance, to ask a client whether they have served time in prison in the last six months or whether their need for SAAP assistance was in any way related to having served time in custody, may lead to the provision of more targeted and individualised assistance.

There also remains a need for ex-prisoners' use of SAAP services to be further investigated through a wider group of agencies and clients. A broader sample of agencies would likely pick up more agencies who are not focused on ex-prisoners and a wider range of service delivery models. A broader sample of clients would also pick up clients who are not ex-prisoners and may have perceptions of whether ex-prisoners are impacting on services. In either case the research will be hampered by SAAP data not clearly indicating whether clients are ex-prisoners. Often the agencies themselves will not be aware of their clients' status as many ex-prisoners will not identify as such if they do not need to, and asking them to identify their status may be a breach of privacy and a barrier to maintaining good agency-client relations. These problems may possibly be overcome if collection of the information can be shown to lead directly to better service outcomes for the individuals providing the information.

Against these difficulties, a question must be asked as to whether ex-prisoner clients are entitled to equal access to SAAP services as any other client group. If it is accepted that ex-prisoners are entitled to equal access to SAAP services and that the individual's present needs are more important than whether they have a criminal history, then it can be argued that the question of whether ex-prisoners have greater impact on SAAP services per se is moot. This is a question for policymakers as it underpins the rationale for where future research should be directed. If it is determined and agreed that SAAP services should be equally available and accessible to ex-prisoner clients as to any other type of client then the important question becomes whether a given individual has a higher level of need than another given individual and whether the agency is equipped to meet those needs. This question would then be informed by determining how the needs of ex-prisoner SAAP clients differ from other types of SAAP client.

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Indigenous post-release homelessness

We still know relatively little about homelessness from an Indigenous perspective. As discussed in Part one of the report, the notion of 'homelessness' may be very different for an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person than it is for others in the community. Understanding more about how Indigenous people experience homelessness is vital if their needs are to be properly met. Without this understanding it will be hard for the Indigenous community to express its needs and for SAAP agencies to know how to address them, or be able to evaluate whether services provided are helping. A greater understanding of Indigenous homelessness is important given the large overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the SAAP client group.

Indigenous people are also greatly overrepresented in the prisoner and ex-prisoner population and little is known about the post-release experiences of Indigenous people. The relatively little research that has been conducted in Australia shows that Indigenous ex-prisoners, particularly females, experience serious problems with maintaining accommodation post-release and are highly vulnerable to re-incarceration. A closer examination needs to be made of the Indigenous post-release experience, especially in relation to accommodation.

This, however, is not a simple task and any attempt to research Indigenous post-release experiences must be undertaken sensitively and appropriately. Language and cultural issues must be given full consideration in the design of the research. The methodology to be used in the research will depend very much on the prior consideration given to these issues, as well as perceived accessibility to clients and potential obstacles. One possibility might be to interview Indigenous SAAP service providers in the first instance, both to gain some insight into the experiences and needs of Indigenous clients and also to provide feedback about any proposed research methodology for interviewing Indigenous clients.

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Post-release domestic violence and links to homelessness

Domestic violence is a major cause of homelessness for many women and children. A majority of homeless women are likely to have experienced domestic violence and there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that some men may leave prison with a heightened propensity for domestic violence. If this anecdotal evidence is valid, it may be that ex-prisoners in some circumstances may contribute to an increased risk of homelessness, including cyclical homelessness, for others. More research is needed to understand rates of domestic violence among ex-prisoners and whether pre- or post-release interventions can be used to reduce levels of violence, and possibly resulting homelessness.

How best to address ex-prisoners' needs

The literature and current study suggests that ex-prisoners do have special needs that may be better served if staff have special training or education to meet those needs. A closer examination of the nature of ex-prisoner needs and what is required to address them is needed. This would need to come from a welfare-education perspective focusing on service delivery skills, intervention models and perhaps adult education techniques. The examination should be informed by the knowledge of ex-prisoners' needs given throughout this report, particularly the best practice suggestions given in Section 7, Part 1.

Regional/local differences

The work of Baldry et al. has indicated that there are some major differences in post-release accommodation outcomes for prisoners released in New South Wales, compared to those in Victoria. Overseas studies have shown significant differences in homelessness experiences and outcomes in different cities. The current study included one regional centre and suggested there are some issues for ex-prisoners in that town that differ from issues in the capital cities, in substance if not in nature.

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There is a need for more information to be gained about the post-release experiences of people in regional areas. A proportion of prisoners are released from prisons in regional areas and may remain in those areas or move to other regional areas, or prisoners released in capital cities may try to settle in regional areas. More needs to be known about how these movements affect post-release accommodation and how changes in housing and employment profiles or other community changes can impact on ex-prisoner accommodation. It may be that where an ex-prisoner's background lies and whether they remain in that area has some effect on outcomes. The issues that arise in relation to regional differences may also applied to different local areas within the one region or capital. Certainly there are some areas that have greater socio-economic problems than others and a greater understanding of how these impact on post-release outcomes could provide valuable policy development information.

Knowledge around these issues may be best achieved by longitudinal studies that focus on prisoners released in different locations and takes into account their background and what services are available in different areas.

Impact of current policy interventions

As discussed in Part one, there are a number of promising developments taking place in Australian jurisdictions with the establishment and formulation of programs that seek to more effectively pursue a targeted and integrated approach to dealing with prisoner post-release outcomes. These developments could have positive impacts on the SAAP sector and could inform policy and program development. Those responsible for SAAP policy development should be aware of emerging programs and take careful note of the evaluations arising from them.

Changes in public and community housing profiles

While it appears that changes in public housing profiles may be impacting on ex-prisoner homelessness, particularly through a reduction in exit points from SAAP services, a closer investigation of this question was outside the scope of the current study. It may be that there are positive changes underway in public housing or that developments in community housing are off-setting some of the negative changes. Further examination of changes in public and community housing would provide information useful for policy development in this area.

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Recommendations

Arising from these conclusions, a number of recommendations or suggestions can be made.

1. The SAAP National Coordination and Development Committee (SAAP CAD) investigate ways to develop stronger partnerships with state and territory correctional services, perhaps through co-resourcing the development of:

2. The SAAP CAD consider ways SAAP data could better identify ex-prisoners among the SAAP client group.

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3. The SAAP CAD develop understanding and knowledge by funding research to address key knowledge gaps, particularly in relation to:

4. In the course of policy and program developments, that consideration be given by all parties to:

5. Investigations be made into the possibility of establishing management standards or a code of conduct for boarding-house type accommodation to reduce the impact of drug and alcohol use and other offending behaviour on recently released ex-prisoners residing in these premises.

6. Investigations be made into the possibility of establishing regulations or code of conduct standards for 'tenancy information services' which can have highly detrimental impacts on an ex-prisoner's ability to secure private rental accommodation.

7. In the course of policy and program development, that consideration be given by all parties to the feasibility of applying SAAP funding to the development of more transitional housing for recently released ex-prisoners, in the form of half-way houses, shared crisis and short-term housing or hostels and more independent and shared medium-term housing options.

8. Wherever possible and appropriate consultative input be sought from ex-prisoners and their representatives to inform SAAP decision making.


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