Birmingham inspection report 2026
Report for Birmingham Prison
Summary
Birmingham, a busy category B reception prison, held a highly transient population of 976 men, of whom 88% were remanded or on short fixed-term recalls. At our last inspection in 2023, we found the jail had made remarkable improvements since the appalling outcomes identified in 2018. On this visit, we found the prison remained stable, despite changes to the population, but there was a disappointing deterioration in our healthy prison test scores for both safety and respect, which had dropped from good to not sufficiently good. Purposeful activity remained poor and preparation for release continued to be not sufficiently good. The large-scale building work on three of the Victorian wings, commissioned after the 2018 inspection, had progressed slowly between 2022 and 2024, but the contractor had gone into administration, and the work had stalled since then. This meant large parts of the jail were out of use and building materials, including a giant crane, dominated much of the site.