Advice for prisoners and ex-offenders

This content applies to England only.

Housing laws vary between England and Scotland. Get advice relating to Scotland

In prison or on release, you may need help and advice with finding somewhere to live, keeping your housing or worries about your finances or debt. Find out where you can get help.

Getting help when you are in prison

Shelter has specialist housing advisers based in prisons across England who can help with questions to do with your housing and money worries when you are in prison, and with finding accommodation and support for when you are released. Call Shelter’s helpline to find your nearest Shelter prison adviser or use our advice services directory to find a Shelter or other advice service in your area.

You may also be able to get help and advice with housing and benefits from other people based in prisons:

peer advisers – prisoners who have been trained by Shelter, the prison or another agency to advise and support other prisoners
prison resettlement workers or housing advisers
probation officers or offender supervisors
your personal officer – a prison officer who is allocated to help you
faith-based organisations.

If there is no Shelter adviser in your prison or in the nearby area, you could contact another advice agency instead – a Citizen’s Advice Bureau, independent advice agency or council housing advice service may be able to help you.

If you qualify for legal aid, you may be able to get help from a Community Legal Advice service – use their directory to find a housing, benefits or debt adviser.
Organisations such as St Giles Trust and NACRO provide specialist advice to prisoners. NACRO’s national resettlement helpline can be contacted on 020 7840 6464.

If you are in a private-run prison, you may not have access to the same range of support that is available in an HMP Prison, and it will be even more important to find a source of independent advice.

If you are being released on probation

In some circumstances, you may be accommodated in a probation hostel (also known as ‘approved premises’) when you are released. This may happen if you are released on licence – for example, if:

your sentence is for 12 months or more, or
you are considered a high risk and have multi-agency involvement (MAPPA) in your case.

If there are any restrictions on where you can live in your licence agreement, it is important that the probation service for the correct area arranges your hostel in time for you to be released. Your probation officer or a housing adviser may also be able to help you find accommodation for when your time in a probation hostel ends.

Many prisoners don’t have to go to a probation hostel on release, but still have licence conditions that say where they can or cannot live or go to – this may be a certain area, district or limited to just a certain street. You can get advice from the probation service about any restrictions that apply to you, and your probation officer or housing adviser may be able to help you find accommodation that fits in with these.

Getting help when you’ve been released

You may find face-to-face Shelter services, advice agencies, law centres or housing advice agencies in your area that can help you when you have been released from prison. Use our advice services directory to find an advice agency in your area.

You can find organisations that provide help for homeless people on the Homeless UK website. Use this website to search for hostels, housing projects and advice services. Specialist projects for ex-offenders in London and Birmingham are also listed.

Helping your adviser to help you

If you have an adviser helping you, for example, with finding accommodation, a homelessness application or applying to the social fund for a community care grant or budgeting loan, they may need to get information from others who have helped you in prison. Make sure you tell your adviser if you have had help from or contact with: