Prisoners freed under Covid-19 plan ‘homeless’

A homeless agency says they are seeing an “influx” of prisoners who have been released early in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in overcrowded jails.

A homeless agency has said they are seeing an “influx” of prisoners who have been released early in a bid to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in overcrowded jails.

Inner City Helping Homeless said these former inmates are resorting to homeless services that are already “bursting at the seams” and ill-prepared to prevent the spread of the virus through homeless hostels.

Councillor Anthony Flynn, CEO of the Dublin-based ICHH, said they dealt with 12 prisoners, who had just been released, on Monday and expected to see more over the subsequent days.

The Irish Prison Service has released around 200 inmates on temporary release within the last fortnight in order to ease overcrowding and prevent, and deal with, any Covid-19 outbreak.

“In the last week there has been an influx and on Monday we had 12 case referrals from prisoners released and we are expecting to see more,” said Cllr Flynn.

“I understand the concerns of the IPS in relation to the spread of Covid-19 in prisons, but we are in the same situation with homeless services.”

He said there were homeless units accommodating 40-50 people, with one unit housing 80 people, with multiple-occupancy rooms and communal eating areas.

“You have between four to six in a bedroom or dorm, and a minimum of two people and they are eating together. That’s not social distancing.”

He said the Dublin Region Homeless Executive had managed to increase the number of beds available and tried to encourage social distancing, but said the numbers looking for beds had not decreased and the reality showed social distancing wasn’t happening.

“They are increasing the bed numbers available, but we are not seeing a reduction in homeless people and my assumption is that’s down to the numbers leaving prison and I’d expect it to get worse over the coming days.”

He added: “You can’t treat homeless people like cattle and stockpiling them into units - the situation is already unmanageable.”

Cllr Flynn said that as well as a higher proportion of mental health and addiction issues, there was a “serious issue” of compromised immune systems with homeless people.

Dermot Kavanagh, director of Cork Simon said that, as it stood, they hadn’t seen the same issue in Cork.

He said the numbers in their own shelter were down on normal rates – 40 currently, compared to 47 typically and just nine people were accessing their Nightlight service, compared to 16 normally.

He said their shelter consisted of 25 single bedrooms and 11 twins. In addition, their soup run was now a take away and they were restricting numbers to their day service.

In a statement, the IPS said that some releases were nothing to do with the Covid-19 temporary releases and relate to the end of a sentence or the granting of bail by a court – and that in these cases it was not possible to notify housing authorities in advance.

It said some prisoners opt not to disclose their risk of homelessness to the prison authorities, and will present to homeless services following their release.

The IPS said it funded 12 resettlement coordinators through the Irish Association for Social Integration Opportunities and that in recent weeks, a further six staff had been provided.

In 2018, these officers assisted 414 prisoners and in 2019 worked with 371 prisoners, the service said.

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