The Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs has not been what anyone would call a model prisoner. Yet the Probation Service now believes that he is suitable for parole in July. Yesterday the Parole Board began mulling its recommendation to Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, with whom the decision rests. In the name of clem- ency, if not justice, Mr Straw should give his assent.

Hollywood likes to remould robbers and murderers as glamorous folk legends. But Biggs - for all his Cockney cheekiness, his brazen taunting of the authorities and his devil-take-the-hindmost audacity - is neither Butch Cassidy nor the Sundance Kid. Biggs is just another tawdry criminal who in August 1963, with 14 accomplices, attacked the Glasgow-London mail train. The raid netted the gang what was then a record haul of £2.5 million. The train's driver was coshed with an iron bar and left senseless.

After serving just 15 months of a 30-year sentence, Biggs climbed out of Wandsworth prison for a life on the run. From Spain and Australia he made his way to Brazil, where he thumbed his nose at Scotland Yard by recording a single for the Sex Pistols and evading extradition by fathering a child with a Brazilian woman. By 2001, deteriorating health had sowed in Biggs an ageing wanderer's yearning to return home.

After landing in Belmarsh prison, southeast London, he was moved two years ago to Norwich jail. His health continues to worsen. Strokes have been capped by bouts of pneumonia and epileptic seizures. He is partially paralysed and can hardly speak. It serves no further purpose to keep him incarcerated. He will head for a nursing home as a free man, but still not an estimable one.