- Ex-prisoners who receive public housing have better criminal justice results than those who receive just private rental assistance
- Public housing generates a net benefit of $5,200 to $35,000 per person over five years relative to continued interactions with the justice system
- In 2019, around 65,000 people were released from jail, with about 9100 individuals released seeking help from a specialised homelessness agency
- According to the Report of Government Services 2021, 46 per cent of ex-prisoners return to jail
Ex-prisoners who receive public housing had better criminal justice results than those who receive just private rental assistance, new Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) research shows.
Researchers from UNSW Sydney, University of Tasmania and RMIT University examined the housing routes of ex-prisoners with complex support needs for AHURI’s study.
The research compared 623 persons who received public housing after being released from jail against 612 people who merely received rental assistance.
According to the study, more than half Australian ex-prisoners are released into homelessness or insecure housing. However if they can get into social housing, expenses connected with their interactions with the justice system drop by $4996 in the first year and then by $2040 each year following that.
Ex-prisoners face a perilous journey through different types of temporary housing, including hotels, caravan parks, specialised homelessness agencies (SHS) and boarding homes, according to the report, with just a handful gaining access to transitional housing designed exclusively for ex-prisoners.
No specific service supporting people’s transition from prison to housing has been the subject of a national policy or reform in its own right, with support varying from state to state.
“When housing costs are taken into consideration, public housing generates a net benefit of $5,200 to $35,000 per person over five years, relative to the cost of providing assistance to an exprisoner in private rental or through homelessness services,” lead researcher Dr Chris Martin from UNSW Sydney said.
“We also found that this provision of public housing ‘flattens the curve’ of average predicted police incidents (down 8.9% per year), time in custody (down 11.2% per year), proven offences (down 7.6% per year) and court appearances (down 7.6%).”
According to the Report of Government Services 2021, 46 per cent of ex-prisoners return to jail, with an extra 8.9 per cent returning to corrective services.
In 2019, around 65,000 people were released from jail, with about 9100 individuals released seeking help from an SHS, while the average time from first exiting prison to getting into public housing is five years.
“Ex-prisoners have been the fastest growing client category for specialist homelessness services over the past decade, increasing 67 per cent over the eight years 2011–12 to 2018–19,” Dr Martin said.
“As a consequence, they make up about 4.6 per cent of all adults seeking SHS assistance over that time.”
Roughly one third of prison entrants were previously homeless, with data showing that less than half of dischargees are expected to be housed in their own homes and 44 per cent expecting to be in short-term or emergency accommodation.
A literature review from the government’s Australian Institute of Criminology in 2018 found that “while supported housing initiatives can be resource-intensive, there is evidence to suggest that they are nonetheless more cost-effective than imprisonment and can contribute to reduced reoffending”.
The report said that housing services provided the most effective outcomes for medium and high-risk offenders in reducing offending and recidivism.