At one point the building was used for a boys' borstal, and then became a police station during World War II.

In 1965 capital punishment for murder was abolished in Britain and, as a result, Kingston began exclusively to hold inmates serving life sentences.

The report detailed that movement in the unit was severely restricted, there was insufficient privacy and the rooms had too little natural light, poor ventilation and in some cases no power points.

From April 2012 Kingston became mainly a Category C prison, holding a high percentage of inmates serving life sentences.

[5] After a community consultation on the development of the site,[6] the former prison is being converted into 267 homes.