Our social impact is very powerful – bringing back underutilised land in areas of acute housing need, employing recently released prisoners to do the building, dramatically reducing re-offending rates, and finally selling the finished houses to local housing associations for affordable rented homes.
Key Stats
We’ve seen the lives of more than 100 ex-offenders transformed and less than 10% of our employees have re-offended since we started.
The national re-offending average is above 25% within 6 months of release and 54% within 1 year. Reoffending while employed by Bristol Together is less than 10%.
We do not choose ‘easy’ cases – 86% of our workers have been imprisoned for serious offences. This work really does change lives.
For those we help to prevent from reoffending and the new social homes we create, we save the state at least £40,000 per individual each year in custody costs alone.
So far we have not included the saved cost of police work, court costs, housing benefit claims, crime victims costs, property damage, offender family costs, forgone income tax costs while incarcerated, etc. These costs are significant.
By providing our employees with life skills and new way of seeing themselves, these benefits can continue for years into the future.
Our employees not only develop as individuals through their work with us, they also get a strong sense of satisfaction from the contribution they make to developing their local community, both in terms of homes created and local supply chain businesses supported.
Downloads
You can download a copy of our last Social Impact Report here.
