Why the Moment Prison Leavers Walk Out the Gate Matters Most

By Steve Gallant QGM

The Justice for Prison Leavers event is both timely and important, and one that is, for me, deeply personal.

For this series, I was invited to take part in a conversation with Dr Gwen Adshead, one of the UK’s leading forensic psychiatrists and psychotherapists, whose decades of work at Broadmoor Hospital have given her a profound understanding of the psychology of offending, harm and change.

When Gwen and I sat down for the recording ahead of the event, it was always going to be candid. We came to the subject from completely different places, but with equally valid perspectives.

Gwen brings the clinical insight. I bring the lived experience.

In 2005, I was handed a life sentence for murder. But I refused to let it define me. In prison, I committed myself to education and desistance, moving away from an offending mindset and towards a different way of living.

Then, on my first day-release in November 2019, I found myself at Fishmongers’ Hall on London Bridge when Usman Khan launched a terrorist attack. Alongside fellow prison leaver John Crilly and civil servant Darryn Frost, I helped bring Khan down.

Lives were tragically lost that day: Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt, two remarkable young people who had dedicated themselves to criminal justice reform. But lives were also saved. For our actions, the three of us were each awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal. I was also granted a Royal Prerogative of Mercy by Queen Elizabeth II, reducing my minimum tariff by ten months and opening the door to a successful parole hearing.

Walking out of prison felt extraordinary. Whether you have served a month or twenty years, the moment you step through those gates and feel the air on your face is unlike anything else. Prison teaches you, viscerally, what freedom means.

But for many people, release can also be extremely challenging. Just when stability matters most, you return not only to a world where you may have previously failed, but to one where you now carry the stigma of your offence and all its practical consequences.

For some, that means nowhere safe to go. Every month, around 1,070 people leave prison into homelessness. For many others, it means trying to rebuild a life while locked out of work, with 70% of prison leavers still unemployed six months after release.

Even when someone genuinely wants to put their head down, work hard and live responsibly, unnecessary barriers can make reintegration far harder than it needs to be. A criminal record can make any type of insurance difficult or impossible to secure, quietly removing some of the basic tools people need to rebuild a lawful life.

Beneath all of this sits the highly stressful and ever-present possibility of recall to prison: sometimes justified, sometimes administered overzealously, sometimes without good reason. Without the right support at that critical point, a fragile return to freedom can quickly unravel.

That is why, after my release, Darryn Frost and I founded Own Merit CIC, a Northampton-based social enterprise named partly as a quiet tribute to Jack Merritt. We provide supportive accommodation for prison leavers at risk of homelessness.

The Ministry of Justice’s own figures show that prison leavers without settled accommodation are almost 50% more likely to reoffend within a year. So our work is not simply about putting a roof over someone’s head. It is about giving people the stability they need to build a lawful, purposeful life and, in doing so, helping to protect the public.

Both aims matter. But public protection is best achieved when people are given a realistic chance to succeed.

The prison system, whatever its strengths and limitations, can only do so much. But I have always believed this: if you get the prison leaver moment right, if you get people housed, supported and connected, you can stop a great deal of what went wrong before from becoming permanent.

It is one of the most critical, and yet most under-resourced, intervention points in the entire justice system.

Do not take my word for it. 

Ask any prison leaver.