An incident at HMP Birmingham that left one inmate needing hospitalisation was resolved late on Sunday night.

A Prison Service spokesperson said: “Specially trained prison staff successfully resolved an incident at HMP Birmingham on 3 September. There were no injuries to staff or prisoners.

“We do not tolerate violence in our prisons, and are clear that those responsible will be referred to the police and could spend longer behind bars.”



One man, believed to be in his 20s, was taken to hospital with a facial injury as well as cuts, bruises and a reduced consciousness, West Midlands ambulance service said. No prison staff were injured.

An unknown number of prisoners refused to return to their cells at the end of Sunday evening at the category B jail, which is run by G4S.

A spokesman for G4S said earlier: “Our teams are responding to an incident on one wing at HM Prison Birmingham. We are working with colleagues from Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service to bring the incident to a safe conclusion.”

A prison service spokesperson said earlier on Sunday night: “We are aware of an ongoing incident involving a small number of prisoners at HMP Birmingham. It is confined to one wing and prison staff are working to resolve it quickly and safely.”

Unconfirmed reports suggested that prisoners were chanting “we want burn” – slang for tobacco.

A smoking ban has been phased in at the jail, which went entirely smoke-free at the end of July. The prison’s website states: “Assistance with giving up smoking is being offered to prisoners in accordance with national guidelines.”

G4S has run the prison, previously known as Winson Green, since 2011 when it became the first public sector jail to be privatised.



A 12-hour riot took place at the same prison in December 2016 and involved more than a third of the 1,450 inmates at its height. The incident was the worst since the Strangeways riot in Manchester 26 years ago and caused about £2m of damage.



The Guardian reported last week that an unforeseen summer surge in prisoner numbers in England and Wales is adding to the pressures on a jail system that is already “woefully short of spare capacity”.

The number of prisoners locked up in England and Wales has risen by 1,200 since May to 86,413 – 1,900 higher than the official 2016 projection of prison numbers for this summer.

Sunday’s disorder follows a riot in early August at a prison in Hertfordshire, where there were only 20 officers on duty to supervise more than 1,000 inmates, and another in Wiltshire.

A prison in Cumbria lost the use of an entire wing late last month because of a serious disturbance, the former prison service director-general Phil Wheatley said.