“People do come out of prison, that’s the whole point. So what’s next?” Lucy Kenningham speaks to ex-offender Jason Barnfather
Since October 10,000 prisoners have been let out before the end of their sentences under the previous government’s early release scheme. Now the scheme has been extended, it’s estimated to lead to another 5,500 prisoners being released early. But what actually happens when you’re let out of jail?
“It’s quite surreal,” Jason Barnfather tells me from a hostel specifically for people released on tag, four months after he was let out from prison. “It’s quite conflicting, because you’re happy to be out, but at the same time you’ve basically been pushed back a few years from your life, and it’s really hard to catch up and get back, to get back to zero, you know?”
Life after prison is tough. You have lost years of your life, languishing in often squalid conditions with very little to entertain or educate you. You may not be up to date on the latest technology, or be able to maintain relationships with family and friends. “That’s the punishment,” Barnfather says frankly. “That’s the idea: you’re away from the people you love and you’re in prison. But then on top of that, having really bad conditions – locked in for an unnecessary amount of time is inhumane – it does a detriment to people. It doesn’t serve their rehabilitation.”
He would know. Barnfather has served time twice, both for drug offences. He served years inside jail and saw terrible things. Conditions were “terrible”: there was overcrowding and rampant drug abuse. The chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, has said that “no one has a grip on the basics of running a prison.”
After being released the first time, Barnfather fell back into old habits of dealing. Yet now he considers himself one of the “lucky” ones. During his last months at HMP Brixton, he secured a place at the prison’s bakery operated by The Clink, a charity that offers work alongside training. Barnfather earned a qualification in City & Guilds NVQ level in patisserie.
The Clink’s bakery in Brixton – photo by Jeremy Withers
Just 20 prisoners are chosen for the programme out of 800 or so inmates. The Clink gave him routine, purpose and confidence: “you’re so grateful just to have the job and be out yourself. You don’t even think that I’m working for one pound something [The Clink doesn’t dictate prices, it is up to individual prisons which can pay prisoners as little as £1 a day].”
“The first three months after coming out of prison are very tough,” Barnfather says. “Personally, I don’t like to ask people for help and stuff. There’s been days where I’ve starved on low food, and I’m waiting for my universal credit and I haven’t told anyone about it, and I’ve just got through and I’ll show up to work [he is an influencer at charity Switchback] like everything’s normal.
I’ll be made homeless. I won’t have anywhere else to go. There will be no more support, no organisation to help me
“And people are doing that all the time. There’s this imperative you start how you mean to go on.
“So you come out of prison with support and go in the right direction with a vision of where you want to end up, end up lost, and go back to what’s familiar and comfortable, and this is what’s happening on repeat.”
Even so, “when my tag comes off [in two months],” Barnfather says, “I’ll be made homeless. I won’t have anywhere else to go. There will be no more support, no organisation to help me.
“In six months, I’m expected to get a job, find accommodation and sort my whole life out, which is near impossible, even for the greatest of minds, and I’m nowhere near the greatest of minds, so it’s a catch 22 position they put you in.”
Indeed, it’s hardly unheard of to be unemployed for at least half a year and indeed, it happened to me. Government data shows that a third of people experiencing unemployment do so for 6-12 months, so this deadline is chillingly harsh, even without the stigma that comes with being an ex-prisoner.
The point of prison
“There’s a lot of people in prison that are very eloquent, they’re very smart, they’re whizzes with logistics or mathematics or whatever, but they’re just not given any chances,” Barnfather says. “And they’re going back into jail and they’re incredibly smart, so they’re good criminals. If you put these incredibly smart people in legit jobs, they’d be incredibly good members of society.”
Post-prison support is vital – firstly, on an individual level. “It’s fair enough that I committed a crime, but I did my punishment,” Barnfather says. “And then I don’t think I deserve to have my life in tatters. I think I deserve to climb back on the social ladder and become a part of society.”
This doesn’t just matter to offenders, but to the rest of us as well. A staggering 80 per cent of offences are committed by people who have already committed crimes, so one clear way of addressing the prison crisis in the long term is to tackle the rate of recidivism. Britain’s is the highest in the Western world; 75 per cent of former inmates will reoffend within nine years of release.
Half of prisoners are illiterate
What is rehabilitation? It means helping a prisoner leave jail better integrated into society. This should entail education – even basic teaching could change lives. Some 57 per cent of adult prisoners have literacy levels below those of the average 11 year old, according to Ministry of Justice data. You’re less likely to turn to the illicit economy if you know how to read and write. Yet education and skills training is barely functioning in most jails, as identified by a review of prisons in 2022. At the time Taylor commented: “At a cost to the taxpayer of around £45,000 each year, it is astonishing that prisoners can serve their sentence without being taught to read or to improve their reading skills.”
Prisons are relying on third sector organisations like the Prisoners Education Trust (PET) which provides distance learning for inmates, and the Shannon Trust, and the Clink for skills training. Yet access even to charity-funded work is being blocked due to the inadequate number of prison officers, leaving prisoners locked in their cells for up to 21 hours a day.
Jon Collins, chief executive of the PET, has called on the new government to review the prison education budget, which has suffered a significant cut in real terms over years. He argues that education is fundamental to rehabilitation. Barnfather agrees: “The main thing [I would change] would be, you know, six months before you leave going through some sort of educational workshops or some sort of rehabilitation and through the gate support as well.”
Probation on its knees
With a deluge of people coming out of prison earlier than expected, the probation union has been sounding the alarm on the state of the sector. Unions claim members are under intolerable pressure due to inadequate pay and unsustainable workloads, which have been exacerbated by the early release scheme. Chief inspector of probation Martin Jones warned 97 per cent of the service was failing even before the launch of the early release prison scheme last year.
Jones questioned if there is “enough time” to get probation processes “right” ahead of the early release of some prisoners under government plans. The service, he said, already has “a caseload nearly three times the number of those in prison”.
The sector is troubled. A report from last year showed the extent of its dysfunction. Inspectors found that in two thirds of individual cases, action was insufficient to keep the public safe. Although the research shows that one-to-one supervision of criminals by skilled staff reduces reoffending rates.
“People do come out of prison. That’s the whole idea of it,” as Barnfather puts it. “So what are the next steps?” Traditional probation focuses more on ensuring prisoners stick to the terms of their licence, are actively seeking employment or further education, along with any other mandatory conditions they need to meet, which is far more limited than the support and mentoring offered by The Clink. Probation work is meant to begin 12 weeks prior to release, but if you’re being released with as little as a day’s notice – that’s impossible.
“We certainly saw and heard in the early release schemes that some releases were very last minute. Some people were told they were being released on the day and released without anywhere else to go, but also released without the support around them,” says Helen Berresford of Nacro, a social justice charity.
“More recently [due to early release] it’s been very, very short notice,” Barnfather says. “You know that you could be eligible, but you won’t know until they’re at your door to leave to go. So there’s no communication, really, it’s just random.”
Released into homelessness
According to reports made to The Clink, community offender managers – probation officers – are unprepared and have had to request a delay in release. Yet these requests are sometimes denied and people are released into homelessness. In April a report found that over the last year one third of prisoners were becoming homeless after leaving HMP Peterborough in Cambridge. In many cases, not having housing automatically triggers a breach of licence which can lead to people becoming imprisoned again. Some people who have been released early haven’t actually wanted to be, being aware that things aren’t in place for them or that they aren’t ready.
Even the timing matters: often people being released early aren’t let out until 3pm leading to ex-offenders missing their initial probation appointments due to travel times and offices closing. They can then miss out on subsequent housing arrangements until the following working day, often after a weekend. People with complex issues like addiction are also being released without medication or support.
In a disturbing turn of events, a report on HMP Peterborough said “despite [released inmates] having no address to go to, managers had been obliged to release some men 18 days early under the End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme, only for some to return to prison before even their original release date had passed”.
And, as the charity Homeless Link has pointed out, the connection between homelessness and recidivism is evident. Some 16 per cent of surveyed prisoners were homeless or living in temporary accommodation shortly after release; they had a higher chance of re-offending at 66 per cent compared with 51 per cent amongst those who had accommodation.
Releasing prisoners early is practically futile if they will be recalled and imprisoned again. The proportion of people in prison due to recall has been rising over recent years – one in three people on probation after release from prison are recalled to custody. Most recalls occur due to non-compliance (in 77 per cent of cases), or failure to maintain contact (34 of cases).
How to break the cycle? “Rehabilitation,” Barthfather says. “Even myself, I’ve felt the temptation to go back to old habits to try and get money the quick way and stuff. But I’ve done two prison sentences, and I know the cycle is vicious.”