Prison and Homelessness: From a Cell to the Street

30th November 2003

This paper, commissioned by the Council for Research and Development, examines the relationship between homelessness and imprisonment and investigates how the link can be broken between these areas of marginalisation. 

The paper contends that homelessness is both a cause and a consequence of imprisonment, with some offenders identifying their homeless status as a cause of their criminal activity and subsequent incarceration, while others become homeless as a consequence of their imprisonment. The paper criticises the failure of Irish housing policy to address the problem in the 1990s, and the failure of the Irish authorities to provide adequate re-integration services for prisoners who have been institutionalised and cannot cope with life outside prison.