'My whole mindset was being a thief. A prison officer's joke changed everything'

Clutching a single plastic bag, Karl Smith steps outside the prison gates. The sun is shining. The birds are chirping. He’d almost forgotten what fresh air felt like.

The dad was finally free having served a sentence for theft. But that freedom wouldn’t last long – he had nowhere to go.

Homeless and on the streets, Karl found himself back behind bars within just a matter of weeks for stealing food.

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This seemingly endless cycle went on for decades until he finally decided to break the pattern and turn his life around for good.

“Forty years of my life vanished before my eyes,” the 59-year-old told the Manchester Evening News. “At the end of the day, it crumbled my whole life in front of me.”

Karl first found himself on the streets at the age of 14. Growing up with four siblings, his mum struggled to put food on the table and he was placed into the care system.

Karl hated the children’s home. Having suffered mental and physical abuse, he escaped through an open window one day and never looked back.

But with nowhere to call home, Karl had to sleep in parks and gardens and beg for food to survive.

He was just 16 the first time he wound up in prison for a year. “I was stealing food and items to sell,” he continued. “My whole mindset was being a thief – I wasn’t a very good one because I was always in jail.

“I’d just go into shops and pick up boxes and walk out with them. It went from that to burgling houses, burgling shops – it was everything that wasn’t nailed down in the end.”

On his release, Karl attempted to find work through several six-month employment schemes. But at the end of the programmes, he was never offered a job.

Karl once again