“Those are release papers,” our guide explained. “Many people are released from prison on a Friday. Often, housing and other services are already booked up or closed for the weekend. If no one meets you at the prison gates, you don’t have anywhere to go until Monday.”

In 2018, more than a third of custody leavers were released on Fridays. Nearly 35% of people leaving prison had no settled accommodation to go. And the Discharge Grant of £46 (given to all prisoners upon release) has not increased since 1995 – halving its value in real terms.

What do these stats mean in practice? The experience of the people sleeping out in the underpass is not an isolated one. A significant number of people face surviving the weekend – when most support services are closed – with just £46 in their pocket. This is barely enough to cover a single night’s accommodation. Shockingly, sleeping rough is sufficiently common that some prisons have been known to ‘prepare’ people by providing tents and sleeping bags on release.

We already know that there are close connections between homelessness and the criminal justice system. But there has been little attention paid by previous governments to how these problems are interrelated.

Read the full article about homlessness and the criminal justice system by Theo Clay and Margery Infield at NPC.