The Morton Hall site, on the former RAF Swinderby airfield near Lincoln, has had a long and varied history. It operated as a boys’ borstal from 1958 to 1975, briefly housed Vietnamese refugees around 1979–81, then reopened in 1985 as an open prison for men. In 2001 it was refitted as a women’s prison, becoming a closed establishment in 2009, before closing as a women’s prison in 2011 and reopening the same year as Morton Hall Immigration Removal Centre, holding adult male immigration detainees.
The IRC closed in July 2021 after the Home Office and HMPPS announced its closure the previous year, citing concerns about the impact of long-term immigration detention. The site reopened in December 2021 as HMP Morton Hall, a Category C resettlement prison for adult male foreign national offenders, one of a small number of prisons nationally dedicated to this population.
Accommodation
The prison has five residential units: Fry and Windsor, which have in-cell facilities and hold around 160 prisoners between them; Johnson and Sharman, which have communal facilities and hold around 145 prisoners (Johnson is used as the induction unit); and Torr, a smaller unit holding around 48 prisoners. There is also a six-cell care and separation unit. Operational capacity is around 353.