In addition to numerous administrative challenges, another factor affects habitation access for people leaving prison: stigmatisation. This population is seen as one of the least “attractive” for landlords as well as for accommodation facilities, which sometimes reject people leaving prison over concerns of the violence they could presumably cause.

Institutions often seem to forget these populations even exist. In France, the Directorate of Prison Administration (DAP) describes having to go to great lengths to ensure that people with criminal records are not left out of government reforms. François-Marie Tarasconi, Deputy Head of the Social Policy and Partnerships Department at the re-integration and probation sub-directorate of the French Directorate of Prison Administration, observes that people leaving prison are are often seen as outcasts. He struggles to gain recognition for what makes them unique. “Our department works alongside numerous partners to compare their policies with the reality of the groups we work with. We also work to remind other ministries that launch various national policies of the existence of our audience as well as their distinctive features”, he explains. The DAP is rarely included, he tells us, in discussions on social policies relating to housing. “When there is a reform from the Interministerial Delegation for Accommodation and Housing Access (Délégation interministérielle à l’hébergement et à l’accès au logement, DIHAL), we are informed at the last possible minute”, he observes. “It is not relevant, because if the goal is to talk, with the different ministries collaborating with the DIHAL, about priority groups such as domestic abuse victims, we would also have to consider working on the perpetrators.”

Finland faces similar challenges. “As a prison service, we have to be very proactive and constantly remind other ministries that the prison population exists and try to raise awareness about this group and its specificities”, says Mikko Hytönen, who works at the central prison service. “No one would ever broach the subject if we weren’t active and engaged.”

Bonnie Erba François, from the Québec Homelessness Prevention Policy Collaborative (QHPPC) in Canada, points out that the current political context is not ideal. The prevailing attitude places emphasis on individual accountability, which fails to question society’s collective responsibility. For Art Campbell, Director of the QHPPC, the population of people leaving prison does not cause a stir or generate empathy: “Unlike victims of domestic violence or immigrant populations, who are often priority populations in measures and reforms, the ‘prison’ population does not draw the attention of politicians or spark the interest of the media environment.”

For Pierre Mercier, Director of the association Le MAS in Lyon (France), counter-narratives must be put forth in order to bring about policy change, especially in terms of support and reintegration. “There is a general reluctance to put money into it”, he acknowledges. “Deep down, people wonder if they should pay to reintegrate people who behaved badly. We need to reframe this argument and promote risk reduction approaches, especially by building up social housing. It’s understandable that as a society, we don’t want to reward these guys who are getting out of prison. But we have to recognise that at the very least, they need to be housed rather than left to live on the street.”

 In addition to their political exclusion, formerly incarcerated individuals are often stigmatised in their access to housing, be it social housing or not. Certain landlords are troubled by their “profile”, and their housing requirements suddenly grow exponentially. Several of the associations interviewed mentioned the suspicion demonstrated in certain situations. Landlords launch mini-investigations, question association teams, fish for information or conduct Internet research to try to find grounds for refusal.

Marine Tocco, Head of the Justice and Social Cohesion division at Les Foyers Matter in Lyon, mentions that in her opinion, stigmatisation is especially problematic when people are in housing as part of a community placement measure: “If something happens in the residence, the neighbours automatically think it’s the new tenant’s fault. The rumours sometimes reach the landlord. Of course, problems do sometimes occur. But the neighbours don’t necessarily realise that there were different people in the housing unit each time. If there were four issues over the past few years, it is very likely that several individuals were involved.”

In Canada, property owners often try to learn details about the future tenant’s theoretical criminal record. Civil society organisations stress that this represents a significant roadblock for people leaving prison, whose housing applications are frequently rejected by landlords. Reza Ahmadi, Director of Research & Evaluation at the John Howard Society of Ontario (Canada), notes the existence of “crime-free housing”, which requires systematic verifications of rental candidates’ criminal records. Anyone with prior involvement with the criminal justice system is automatically rejected.

For many incarcerated people, entering detention is characterised by the experience of a penitentiary shock resulting from imprisonment. At the end of their sentence, there is often the shock of release. This shock, which is perhaps more insidious than penitentiary shock, typically results from a combination of factors: the radical change between life in detention and life in the outside world; the total readjustment required; the weight of stigmas; administrative and financial issues; the isolation resulting from the breakdown of interpersonal relationships during the sentence; and the emotional and psychological challenges associated with the transition to freedom. This phenomenon is more dramatic for people who spent several years behind bars and whose penitentiary experience left marks on them. The continuation of incarceration in their minds and bodies can then become an obstacle as they attempt to return to “normal” life. This reality is far from the romanticised representation of a prison release where the overjoyed person is ready to regain their freedom right away. “People prepared for this release. They invested in it”, explains Sylvie Daniel. “But the period in detention takes a significant toll on them, especially on their mental health. They might spend long periods feeling depressed and anguished. The loss of the ideal really hurts.”

Release from prison is sometimes described as a period of survival rather than a return to life. This is often when the mental and physical repercussions of imprisonment appear. “It’s striking to see how mental illness suddenly appears in some people, as do surges in drug and alcohol consumption, after they are released from detention”, observe Marielle Colombin and Julianne Legrand, from the Centre Feydel Liotard, a homeless shelter with a social rehabilitation element (centre d’hébergement et de réinsertion sociale, CHRS) in Lyon. As such, a large part of their work involves supporting people along the care pathway and reassuring them as they face their concerns over fear of medicalisation, treatment, or returning to a form of imprisonment in a psychiatric hospital or care home.

In addition, all interview participants mentioned that the traumatic consequences of detention are largely underestimated. They continue to have an impact for months, even years, on the daily lives of the people affected. For Jane Abad-Martinez, public policies fail to take into account the mental, social, and familial burdens and, more generally, the fractures generated by time spent in prison. “They underestimate this fragmentation, which also leaves marks on the body, and in so doing, they allow people to assume that the person will be able to receive the same support as any other person in need.”

Leaving prison, in addition to the administrative and spatial changes, involves disruptive shifts in habits and how everyday life works (grocery shopping, waiting for the bus, social interactions and relationships). These difficulties in adaptation or readaptation have been documented under the term “prisonisation”, borrowed by sociologist Philippe Combessie from Donald Clemmer. He describes it as a “process in which an incarcerated person adopts values and ways of life specific to the prison environment. The longer the imprisonment, the more the incarcerated person acquires habits specific to the prison lifestyle: no longer opening doors, using the toilet in front of others, not taking initiatives, etc.” (Combessie, 2009, p. 732).

 Prisonisation refers to a loss of autonomy caused by the carceral experience. It is more than just small habits that must be picked up again or health problems that could be resolved with a few consultations: it is a form of lived violence that represents a significant burden when the time comes to reintegrate into society. Some people have to relearn how to live in society, in a habitation and a million other little things.

“Even silence must be relearned”, note Marielle Colombin and Julianne Legrand. “Prisons are very noisy. After release, people must readjust to hearing silence, which can be unbearable at first.” The two employees of Le MAS also mention the way in which the people welcomed at the centre must relearn – or learn – to become accustomed to habitation. “People who just left prison often live solely in their bedroom, with the television pushed up against the bed, like in a cell”, they explain. “Little by little, some start to move into other rooms, like the living room or the kitchen. The change can also be seen in their bodies and posture. At first, they are usually very hunched over, then they slowly start standing taller and taking up space again.”

In 2022, Jean-Noël Barnet published an article entitled “Living after Prison: The Relation to Space among Women Leaving Prison and Social Work Issues“. He conducted interviews with several women who had spent time in prison, who spoke to the enduring effects of prisonisation long after release. One of them, Danielle, said, “When I moved into this flat, I didn’t sleep in my room for a really long time. Every night, I put a mattress in the living room, on the floor, even though the bedroom was pretty big! […] I was minimising my space; I had trouble adjusting.”

Social workers can respond to these difficulties by adjusting their processes to include support solutions adapted according to needs: daily presence, long-term support, one-time assistance, organising meetups, etc. These long-term effects produce highly specific needs in terms of habitation upon release – individual or collective, temporary or permanent, independent or assisted, and so on.

Nicolas Molle said one day, when he was working at Le MAS, that the time spent in prison was a little like a breakup. It takes time to get past it, and different people need different amounts of time. Numerous stakeholders highlight the importance of avoiding the injunction for speed or autonomy, as rushing could cause people to close in on themselves. Everyone who was interviewed acknowledged the soundness of Housing First but emphasised that transitional models can be essential in certain cases. The most important thing is to be able to combine solutions in different forms.

 Jean-Noël Barnet examines social accommodations in the transitional time and space around women’s release from prison. Most women he met found it reassuring to be in the presence of professionals and part of a community in the initial period after incarceration. He quotes one of them, Kadiatou, in his research: “It was very important to be in a shared facility at first, then to move on; being in a flat right away would have been too great a shock.”

The role of social accommodation as a transitional step is frequently mentioned, in particular for people who had experiences with other institutions prior to detention (youth custody, psychiatric hospitals, etc.). Jane Abad-Martinez and Razika Bizriche also give the example of young people placed in care through child welfare, who may find it difficult to enter independent housing after their time in prison. “There is work to do before they enter individual housing”, they note. “These young people have spent their whole lives receiving support from professionals, sometimes being led by the hand by childcare specialists. All of a sudden, they find themselves in isolation. They are between 19 and 25 years old. Having their own home feels like a dream come true, but they have no prior experience. Since this is a first, they can’t tell us what their needs are, which is normal. New experiences can be complicated: sometimes, after six months in their home, the person starts to feel really lonely and distances themself from the housing, starts to go looking in past resources.” In France, group accommodations in homeless shelters with a social rehabilitation element (CHRS) offer advantages, for some, in terms of transition. Julianne Legrand remarks on the effectiveness of this relationship-based habitation type and its benefits for people suffering the shock of being released from prison: in her opinion, the collective can help people heal. Sylvie Daniel echoed this sentiment: “Some people are thoroughly influenced by prison and express the need for a transitional period in an institution, and we have to accept that, for the time being, that’s how they feel. There’s no need to discredit their desire to join or leave a CHRS, for example. They know what suits them, what reassures them.”

Cédric Sadin-Cesbron is the author of “Living in a CHRS: making oneself at home without a home of one’s own (Habiter en CHRS : faire comme chez-soi quand on n’a pas de chez-soi)”. In this publication, he highlights that the humanist principle stating that anyone can be integrated can rapidly transform into a mandatory injunction saying everyone must be integrated. He notes that Housing First, as it becomes the sole current paradigm, is not an exception to this tendency. Re-integration policies can ultimately create “re-integration outcasts”, because independent housing requires the ability to support oneself on a day-to-day basis, which can be a source of anxiety for some people, especially when their resources are not stable. He writes: “Living ‘independently’ also requires the ability to not become overwhelmed by the outside, a challenge that came up several times in the interviews. Former rehoused residents often maintained ties to people who were still on the street, who asked them for accommodations, as a favour.” He explores the blurred distinction between accommodations and housing. Some facilities offer housing schemes, but with reception and support that are nearly identical to what would typically be called accommodation, with rules and a limited timeframe. It would be more appropriate now to consider habitation, with the distinction being “made instead between an individual habitation or a group habitation, according to the needs of the individuals.”

What some people need more than anything is to spend time alone. Gabriel Uribelarrea is a sociologist and co-author of the research report “Housing First - Understood by its beneficiaries (Logement d’abord - Saisi par ses destinataires)”, published in 2023. In it, he mentions that, rather than the imposed solitude experienced during the period of forced community living in detention, some people seek out tranquillity to soothe and protect themselves. Regardless of the type and shape of the habitation, a solution will only work if people feel at home. This is shown in a report published in New Zealand by Alice Mills, a professor at the University of Auckland. “Numerous studies have long since established that having stable housing decreases the risk of reoffending. We examined this conclusion”, she explains, and “found that the most important thing was not having stable housing but having a place that people considered home, where they felt at home and where they could really start building or rebuilding their lives.” Furthermore, this feeling is not dependent on the time spent in this housing, but solely on whether or not they feel at home.

 Everyone agrees that we need to move away from the normative aspect of housing and think more pragmatically. “The idea is to start with what works for the person and their strengths, and to explore different ways of living, supporting them in a habitation project that means something to them”, say Marielle Colombin and Julianne Legrand.

Gabriel Uribelarrea mentions in the 2023 research report the assertion of a “housing standard”: existing housing schemes primarily assist people in accessing individual flats. “But our observations show that some people would rather live in other types of habitation”, he explains. The sociologist cites the case of a man who wanted to live in a van but hadn’t ventured to talk about it with the housing professionals assisting him because he felt it wasn’t their role. “The supply remains very normative, but professionals and landlords are beginning to discuss and consider the subject”, notes Gabriel Uribelarrea.

In addition, it is important for social work professionals to remind – or inform –people that they are allowed to make a mistake and/or to want to change habitations: expectations and needs can change quickly. Lapses in judgement can also occur. For Jane Abad-Martinez, people need to be able to experiment and stumble sometimes. “Are you unhappy in this housing or this type of habitation? Are you struggling to cope with the solitude? Well, we have to be able to say that it’s not a big deal if it didn’t work out, that we’ll try another solution and we’ll work on it together.”

Accessing habitation means living in a space and also occupying it, but not just in the physical sense of the term. Regaining independence after leaving the walls of prison is not an easy task. Sometimes people have to re-learn – or learn for the first time – what everyday life in their own home entails: organising their days, doing the housework, cooking, shopping and so on. “Occupying a space is full of challenges: running into neighbours in the stairwell, not bothering everyone when you’re stressed or inebriated, not losing your keys, remembering to take out the trash”, says Pierre Mercier, Director of Le MAS. “There are things you have to bear in mind beyond the material aspects. Occupying isn’t just being shut up in a box so as to not bother the people outside. It also relates to matters of primary safety, social affiliation and ownership. It has to do with relationships with oneself and with the world, and those require work and reflection. How does the person perceive their housing? Do they feel good there? Are they bored? How do they look after themself?”

Support is essential. Prison Insider met some participants of the Passage programme at Le MAS (France) who emphasised how valuable it was to have the team by their side. They said that, at the time of their release, in addition to housing and administrative help, they needed to be able to talk, to feel supported and to know that, if necessary, someone could help them and “stop them from running straight into a wall”.

Hervé Rayter, Director of the socio-judicial division of AJHIRALP, an association in Grenoble, highlights the importance of daily contact with the people receiving assistance – primarily in the context of community placement – which goes beyond the requirements of judicial measures. Taking time at the end of the day to chat with each person is a prime opportunity to learn about how their day went, what they’re feeling, any challenges they’re facing and their concerns. “Sometimes I spend several hours on the telephone because people need to vent or share what’s on their mind. It’s important to make time for them.”

 Most of the organisations interviewed also offer activities to help the people they support build confidence and strengthen their capacity for self-reliance.

Marine Tocco mentions that the association Les Foyers Matter works with the local environment centre (Maison de l’Environnement) to raise awareness about environmental issues and with Les Petites Cantines on the topics of social connections and nutrition. People can also participate in the programme “Les clé de chez Moi” (“The keys to my place”) offered by the association Abribus. In a bus transformed into a show flat, they have access to basic training on electricity, plumbing, etc. “The idea is for people to learn to do all these things themselves”, explains Marine Tocco. “Sometimes, we go to the flats and notice that there’s no light. The light bulb burnt out and they had no idea that replacing bulbs is really easy. It’s the same with falling cupboards and clogged sinks and the like.” People who have experienced long periods of incarceration tend to be more disciplined in housing upkeep because for years, their cell was one of their only points of reference. As such, they learned to look after it every day. “In all cases, taking ownership of the housing unit is a challenge. It takes time to get a handle on it, do the housework, etc.”

 Peer support schemes and programmes can also facilitate entering habitation and settling into life beyond bars. In Canada, several peer helpers work alongside social workers at the John Howard Society in Montreal and Quebec City. They offer specialised support, including regular meetups, availability by telephone and support for various administrative procedures.

Daniel Vachon, a peer helper at the organisation, says that he himself spent the better part of his early adult life behind bars. He says he was not adequately prepared for his release. While in detention, he did a training course to become a peer helper and be able to assist other incarcerated people in rebuilding their lives following their incarceration. After his release, he worked for 14 years as a psychosocial counsellor in a support structure for homeless people. He joined the John Howard Society of Québec as a peer helper in 2021. “I meet people who voluntarily request to see a peer helper, and we chat about the difficulties they’re encountering and the solutions that could be available to them, taking into account my life experience – my achievements but my failures as well”, says Daniel Vachon. “We meet up somewhere other than an office, for example in a cafe, a park, or some other public place.” He supports people during medical appointments, with administrative procedures to obtain benefits, driving licences or identity cards, and in the search for employment or training. He is also tasked with organising social activities with the volunteer participants: for example, a Christmas dinner, picnics near the river or in the countryside, excursions to a sugar shack or even museum visits. He sees his work as complementary to social work. “The volunteers confide more in me and identify more of their difficulties, since I went through the same experiences. Because I was able to make it through, I’m an example for them; they trust me. We have a better understanding of one another, which helps them accept the support they need to get by and avoid reincarceration.” Daniel Vachon says that the volunteers can count on his presence at all times. “When someone needs a sympathetic ear to confide in or simply to share their pain or distress, we can’t wait until the next day to answer, we have to be there in the moment when the need arises”, he observes. “That’s why I sometimes answer even late at night, and why everyone has my personal telephone number.”

The creation of shared community moments in individual schemes is mentioned by other stakeholders. Hervé Rayter says that AJHIRALP organises group activities and events – exercise, walking, hikes in the woods, barbecues, cultural excursions, etc. – so that the individuals receiving support can gradually recover a social life. He mentions that a reception area and a computer room were installed, designed as community spaces so that people could spend time together and talk to each other.

Gabriel Uribelarrea notes that Housing First initiatives still do not give sufficient consideration to this community-building. He adds that creating community spaces, meeting places and third places is essential in combatting solitude in housing and ensuring the people receiving support can interact. “It seems incredibly important to have a place where people are able to meet up with each other if they so choose, to compare their experiences and give each other advice”, he notes. “In some cities, there are day care centres that support Housing First schemes. People appreciate having these spaces to come relax and have a coffee with others, but also ask questions and receive guidance, even after the support period has ended.”

The problems relating to accessing habitations have long been identified, as have their causes. However, there is no shortage of possible solutions. To develop them, more human and financial resources are needed, which would require political will. Instead, short-term thinking and constant rejection towards the margins seem to prevail. Throughout the discussions for this series, numerous people wondered: since money can always be found to build more and more spaces in prison, what would it take to be able to do the same for social support?