LONG-term convicts locked up indefinitely for the public’s protection should not be held in Birmingham’s Winson Green prison, a jails watchdog has warned.

In its annual report, the Independent Monitoring Board alleges that the prison in Winson Green is “totally unsuitable” for prisoners serving IPP sentences (Indeterminate sentences for Public Protection). These prisoners are not eligible for automatic release once their sentence expires. They will only be freed when the Government’s Parole Board is satisfied they do not continue to pose a threat to the public.

The report adds that the prison does not have the resources to implement specific programmes necessary to prepare inmates for their eventual release.

The prison has an operational capacity of 1,450 and serves courts sitting in Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Stafford. In the course of a typical year the prison will deal with more than 9,000 different prisoners. At the end of the reporting period last year, there were 39 IPP prisoners at Birmingham, including four inmates who had exceeded their minimum sentence tariff.