Alma combines safe housing placement, meet-at-gate peer support, and AI-powered recovery coaching to break the cycle of addiction-driven reoffending.
*in England and Wales
Released
from custody
Homeless / unstable
40–50% of people
Relapse
within 72 hours
Reoffend
and the cycle restarts
Relapse in the first 72 hours after release is common. It is the most dangerous window in the system. Without stable housing and support, the cycle restarts almost immediately.
The problem is not a shortage of good providers. There are excellent recovery housing organisations doing vital work across the UK.
The problem is structural: no national marketplace, no shared standards, no digital infrastructure connecting supply to demand in real time.
“Without housing you do not stand a chance. You cannot sign up with a GP; you cannot get your kids back; you cannot get a job; you cannot enrol in longer-term mental health and drug and alcohol support”
Alma is a digital platform for addiction recovery and justice reform. It combines safe housing placement, meet-at-gate peer support, and AI-powered daily recovery coaching to reduce addiction-driven reoffending. The starting cohort is women leaving prison. The expanding cohort is everyone on the same pathway.
A confirmed, NARR UK-accredited address before release day. Without safe and sober housing, no other intervention holds. Alma begins here — always. 76% of people released homeless reoffend. 36% of those released into settled housing reoffend. The difference is a home.
A peer mentor with lived experience meets every person at the prison gate. A confirmed address, a recovery meeting in the diary, and someone who has been through it. The 72-hour window is the most dangerous period in the system. This is how we change the odds.
A daily touchpoint between human meetings. Not a replacement for AA, NA, or human connection — a scaffold for it. The AI coach keeps people connected to their recovery community, surfaces early warning signs, and helps caseworkers act before crisis hits.
Outcome data from every placement feeds back into provider quality scores, commissioner intelligence and the NARR UK standards framework — creating a self-improving network that attracts better providers, drives up standards and compounds recovery capital across the system.
Alma is solving the information disconnect impacting offenders.
The first step is a solution that connects probation officers and housing providers to find suitable housing placements for offenders before release.
Alma addresses the housing and release crisis through two integrated components: a live national housing marketplace that confirms placements before release, and a meet-at-gate service that ensures no one walks out of the prison gate alone. These two components are designed to work together — but each has distinct implications for accommodation partners.
Without safe and sober housing, no other intervention holds. The evidence is unambiguous. Alma begins with a confirmed address — every time, no exceptions.
A peer mentor with lived experience, a confirmed address, and a recovery meeting in the diary. This is not optional for Alma. It is the point.
The UK recovery housing market is entirely unregulated. Alma will not list a provider that does not meet NARR UK standards. It costs us placements in the short term. It protects the people we serve in the long term.
The AI recovery coach is a daily touchpoint between human meetings — a scaffold for the recovery community, not a replacement for it. AA and NA are not features of Alma. They are the destination.
Every output from Alma’s intelligence layer is a recommendation for a human to act on. The algorithm does not recall, revoke, or exclude. A caseworker decides. This is the correct architecture for a system that affects people’s liberty.
Beds filled. Relapses prevented. Recalls avoided. Lives sustained. The evaluation framework will be independently designed, assessed, and published.
£375M – £1.7BN
Depending on scale reached. The bed shortage is not incidental to the crisis — it is structural. Alma addresses it structurally.
Alma is led by people who understand the system from inside the rooms where policy is made — and from the front line.
Ed brings to Alma a combination of frontline and system-level experience that is genuinely unusual. He sits in the rooms where justice policy is made — and lives in the world Alma is designed to serve. The platform has been built from both directions simultaneously.
Simon understands both what it takes to build category-defining companies and what it takes to stay sober in a prison chapel. He has spent more than 20 years leading AA and NA meetings inside HMP Wormwood Scrubs and HMP Brixton. Sober for nearly 25 years.
Ella has worked across the systems Alma seeks to connect. From government departments to venture capital, she brings a systems thinker’s perspective to the team — understanding how people, data, institutions, and incentives interact across an entire system.
We’re building the coalition now — housing providers, commissioners, technologists, and funders who believe this can be done.