HMP Birmingham much safer since 2018 crisis, but men locked up for up to 22.5 hours

HMP Birmingham had transformed since a crisis in 2018, HM Inspectorate of Prisons found. The inspectorate’s report, published in May 2023, followed an inspection that ended in February 2023. Inspectors described a jail that was much safer and more decent.

In August 2018 the then Chief Inspector of Prisons issued an Urgent Notification about the prison. This formal step tells the Justice Secretary of urgent and significant concerns, and the government must respond publicly within 28 days. By the 2023 inspection, the supply of drugs had fallen far below 2018 levels, and violence had dropped by more than 60%.

Yet most men still had no job or education place. Many spent up to 22.5 hours a day locked in their cells. HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor wrote simply: “This was not acceptable.”

Grades and background

Birmingham is a category B reception prison for adult men, serving courts across the West Midlands. Over 60% of its prisoners were unsentenced or on remand. It held 961 men at the time, against an operational capacity of 977, and received 3,638 new prisoners a year.

The public sector took back management of the prison in 2019. Part of the site dates from 1849.

Inspectors judge every adult prison against four healthy prison tests: safety, respect, purposeful activity, and rehabilitation and release planning. Purposeful activity covers education, work and time out of cell. Birmingham scored reasonably good for safety and for respect. It scored poor for purposeful activity and not sufficiently good for rehabilitation and release planning.

Inspectors set out 15 key concerns, six of them priorities. The prison had achieved all four main safety recommendations from 2018 and the single main purposeful activity recommendation. It had not achieved either main recommendation on release planning.

This was not acceptable. Making sure that prisoners spend longer unlocked in purposeful activity must be a priority for the jail.

Charlie Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons

How the prison turned around

Charlie Taylor gave much of the credit to the governor, who arrived in 2018. He said the governor had made a relentless effort to raise standards. That work included cutting the flow of drugs and tackling serious staff corruption. The report said leaders dealt robustly with corruption, with dismissals and criminal charges where possible.

Wings felt calm, ordered and clean. Major spending by the prison service had repaired cells once covered in graffiti, with broken windows and observation panels. Showers had been refurbished, and the piles of rubbish had gone. Long-serving officers told the Chief Inspector of Prisons the prison had never been as good.

Inspectors recorded six examples of notable positive practice. A heatmap known as a spectrum matrix helped staff track violence, gang activity and self-harm. A regular crime clinic with police liaison officers made sure serious offences received proper handling. A full-time Shannon Trust co-ordinator had trained 38 prisoners as mentors to help others read.

Time locked up

The biggest failing was time in cell. Many men had only 90 minutes a day out of their cells. Some had to choose between exercise, a shower and other activities. Leaders had not created enough places in education, training or work, and attendance was poor. The range of workshops was too narrow.

Staffing shortages lay behind many problems. Over a third of officers were unavailable for operational duties, so managers regularly moved staff around. Recruitment and retention remained difficult. Inspectors warned that refurbished wings would soon reopen and the population would rise, putting further strain on staffing.

Some officers’ behaviour fell short. In the inspectorate’s survey, too many men felt unsafe, and some reported victimisation by staff. This was particularly true of men who had been segregated or had mental health problems. Emergency cell bells sometimes went unanswered for up to an hour.

Health care also raised concern. Nurses were in short supply, and clinical rooms failed infection control standards. Weaknesses in medicines management persisted from the previous inspection.

Planning for release

Release planning was disjointed and overly complicated. An under-resourced offender management unit had not assessed some high-risk men early enough. Inspectors judged risk management planning for their release weak. Resettlement services were short of staff, and it was unclear who assessed men’s needs before release.

The report said changes to probation services had hit the prison hard. Men on remand, an increasingly large group, received little support.

Charlie Taylor said he was confident the prison would keep progressing under its current leaders. He wrote that “the substantial improvements at Birmingham show what can be achieved when there is strong leadership, clear priorities and support from the prison service”. The inspectorate later published an independent review of progress at Birmingham in August 2026.