Pentonville prison in Caledonian Road

PENTONVILLE prison is a vermin-infested “hell” where 11-inch knives are smuggled in and letters from prisoners begging for training go unanswered.

This is the damning verdict from a recently-freed inmate amid new calls for the jail to be shut down.

Frank, who is using an alias to protect his identity, went into the men’s prison in Caledonian Road when he was 24 and left in May this year, aged 27. His account of life in the severely overcrowded prison matches the findings of a report into the prison by the independent monitoring board (IMB), published this week, which stated it was “unfit for purpose”.

HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor this week told the Guardian newspaper it would “ideally” be closed.

Frank told the Tribune that when he arrived at the prison he spent the first two days without a pillow in a cell covered in human faeces and urine. Within a week he was threatened with a knife and described how, in the days before HRH The Princess Royal was due to visit in May this year, more than 30 knives were found hidden in cells during a crackdown by wardens.

He claimed he used newspaper and sellotape to control an infestation of cockroaches which lived in the walls alongside mice and rats.

The prison is designed to hold around 450 men but currently has around 1,200 inmates, in conditions he called “inhumane”.

Frank said: “I once went four days without a shower.” He said officers joked to him they would take their lives if they had to live in Pentonville, while he said he was “scarred” by some of the violence he witnessed.

While the IMB report into conditions at the prison found it had become “normalised” to give prisoners just one hour out of their cells, Frank disagreed. “I had to sometimes beg the officers, ‘ah, please let me take a shower, man.’ Do you know how demeaning that is? It was inhumane,” he said.

In 2020 Pentonville was put into “special measures” due to a rise in violence. The number of inmates has continued to rise since then.

Frank said that things improved when he was moved to J wing – the part of the jail the Princess Royal visited.

“There needs to be more prisons like J wing,” he said, describing how for the first time during his incarceration he was finally allowed out of his cell in the day for socialising and training, and how he learned to become a “chess master” there.

IMB Pentonville chair Alice Gotto said: “For the second year running we received more calls from prisoners to the IMB helpline than any other prison in England and Wales. Despite the hard work of staff and management, Pentonville remains an unfit place for prisoners to live or to be rehabilitated.”

A Prison Service spokesman said: “HMP Pentonville has taken urgent action to address some of the issues raised in the report.

“This includes major refurbishments to boost capacity and launching new training and education programmes so prisoners can turn away from crime for good.

“The government is also pressing ahead with the biggest expansion of prison places in over a century, delivering 20,000 additional spaces including six new, modern jails.”