Pentonville Prison

PRISONS minister Damian Hinds has said overcrowding at Pentonville “will be necessary for the foreseeable future” – despite warnings about inmate safety.

He made the comments in a letter to the jail’s independent monitoring board.

While acknowledging overcrowding was a “priority concern”, Mr Hinds wrote: “Some crowding will be necessary at HMP Pentonville for the foreseeable future, as we work through the effect of the court backlog.”

He said that the prison in Caledonian Road would soon be holding 1,205 men – a 20 per cent rise from March last year.

Initially designed for 520 people in single cells, the 180-year-old institution now holds more than double that, with two people locked in a cell for one.

Mr Hinds said the total number of prisoners was still below a historical operational capacity of 1,310.

The prison inspectorate described it as “a cramped early Victorian relic, with claustrophobic wings and a crumbling physical infrastructure” in a report last year

The findings of that unannounced inspection added: “It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Pentonville cannot safely and decently care for its current population.”

Seven inmates have taken their life there in the past three years.

Mr Hinds sent a letter to Alice Gotto, the chair of the independent monitoring board who lives in Canonbury. This was in response to a one she had sent him calling for action on overcrowding and staffing shortages.

This week, she said his response “doesn’t answer the points we made in any particular way” and called for the government to focus attention on chronic problems facing older prisons.

Pentonville is the third most crowded prison in London, behind Wands­worth and Brixton.

Ms Gotto said: “I would like them to be addressing the issue in places like Pentonville where there is a real need, and building new prisons isn’t going to answer that problem.

Prisons minister Damian Hinds

“More focus needs to be put on making Pentonville a better, more habitable place where it’s easier for staff to do their jobs, and building another 20,000 prison places doesn’t help. We don’t think the conditions are humane.

She added: “Where you’ve got two men in a cell designed for one it’s always going to be a problem.”

Pentonville is primarily a remand prison with 75 per cent of its population awaiting trial.

A backlog in court hearings is due to Covid-caused delays. There was also a barristers’ strike over pay last year.

Mr Hinds described the current situation as an “acute and sudden increase in the prison population”.

The government is now building more prisons – using £3.8billion to create an additional 20,000 prisoner places.

In Ms Gotto’s letter to the government, sent in December, she said: “In addition to the inhumane living conditions at Pentonville, the effect of overcrowding on almost every other aspect of a prisoner’s existence is hard to overestimate and in the board’s view the resulting environment is not conducive to any kind of rehabilitation.

“We are fully aware of the current pressure on prison places but notwithstanding these we would urge you to act with compassion and ask HMPPS to do all it can to reduce the population pressures on Pentonville.”

Andrew Neilson of the Howard League for Penal Reform, based in De Beauvoir, said: “At the last full inspection in 2019, inspectors raised concerns about safety and decency in Pentonville, insisting that the ‘depressing cycle of promise and further decline cannot be allowed to continue’.

“Ministers should act now to save lives. We cannot go on cramming more and more people into jails such as Pentonville without any thought for the consequences. The solution to this crisis begins with sensible steps to re­duce the prison population.”

A Prison Service spokesperson said: “HMP Pentonville’s operational capacity is increasing thanks to major refurbishment and maintenance work. Capacity limits are set by the prison’s management, who assess the number of prisoners who can safely be held there. We are delivering 20,000 new prison places over the next few years.”