Could ill health get Biggs out of jail?

A shadow of the brash train robber

Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs is back in prison, but could the aged and seemingly ailing criminal be released on compassionate grounds?

In 1965, convicted robber Ronnie Biggs scaled the 25-foot wall of Wandsworth Prison and leaped to a waiting open-top van and freedom.

After 13,068 days "unlawfully at large", the Great Train Robber hobbled into Belmarsh Prison to resume his 30-year sentence, his health reportedly ravaged by a series of strokes.

Biggs: Climbed out, shuffled back

Will Britain's most notorious escapee see out his days in a prison cell or could the 71-year-old be released on compassionate grounds?

The home secretary is allowed, under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991, to offer prisoners early release if "exceptional circumstances exist".

Failing health has been seen as reasonable grounds for the granting of a release on licence, even for the nation's more infamous inmates.

Reggie Kray - serving life for murder - benefited from just such a licence in August 2000, when it became clear he had inoperable bladder cancer.

Dying to get out

The once fearsome 66-year-old, who with his twin terrorised the East End underworld, was deemed unlikely to commit further offences by the Home Office.

Whereas Ronnie and the twins' older brother Charlie both died on the inside, Reggie slipped away in the honeymoon suite of a £37.50-a-night hotel in Thorpe St Andrew near Norwich.

Prison doctor Theodore Dalrimple says compassionate medical releases are usually granted to those who are terminally ill or whose pain cannot be relieved in a prison hospital.

Only one of the Kray brothers died a free man

However, he says the final decision is a "political" one, where a prisoner's state of health is weighed against the seriousness of their crime and the possibility of their re-offending.

"I have known people who were aged, who in my opinion were extremely unlikely to ever commit offences - partly because they were physically incapable of them - who haven't been released," says Mr Dalrimple.

It is speculated that there exists a core of high-profile prisoners who would not be granted licence, no matter what their health circumstances.

Having served more than his minimum sentence, and given the limited public sympathy for his gangland victims, Reggie Kray's release aroused little controversy.

Held in ill regard

Moors Murderer Myra Hindley - who was recently the subject of conflicting reports suggesting she was in very poor health - might not be able to rely on much public compassion.

Even if the home secretary was willing to weather the bad press involved in releasing the UK's longest-serving female prisoner, the logistics of the move might prove impractical.

Would even ill health speed Hindley's release?

Hindley's part in the murder of four children has made her a figure of hate. Providing her with sufficient protection in an NHS hospital or hospice would take both considerable resources and political will.

In the United States, stiffer sentencing and victims' rights campaigns have eroded the system of compassionate releases for even lower-profile convicts.

Consequently, since 1980 the number of inmates dying in prison each year has risen fourfold to more than 3,000. Some prison governors have responded by beefing up their medical facilities to deal with the terminally ill.

Perhaps tellingly, London's Belmarsh Prison - the new home of Ronnie Biggs - is reported to have some of the best medical facilities available to any inmates in the country.