A number of prisoners in Pentonville Prison in North London have been illegally detained in squalid conditions due to a series of sentence length calculation errors, an inspection of the prison has revealed.
The inspection led by Chief Inspector Charlie Taylor, which took place between the June 30 and July 11 this year, found that backlogs in sentence length calculations were leading to some prisoners being detained unlawfully and ten prisoners being released early by accident.
Alongside significant inaccuracies in sentence length, prisoners were kept in squalid conditions and often left locked up with nothing to do for up to 22 hours a day.
Despite the fact that in the last year there have been three suicides at the prison, few changes had been made following the identification of problem areas by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman.
Chief Inspector Taylor said: “Pentonville is an overcrowded, inner-city, Victorian prison with a record of poor performance over many years.
“Too many of its staff have become disillusioned about the possibility of improvement or their capacity to affect change.
“Yet many of its shocking failures are firmly within the control of leaders.”
His inspection team assessed the quality of the prison conditions on safety, respect, purposeful activity and preparation for release.
Their report found that the scores at the prison were poor across the board with only respect rising slightly above to ‘not sufficiently good’.
Violence levels at the prison were found to be high and much of it motivated by easy drug access within the prison walls.
Staff were unaware of who many of the prisoners were and 44% of prisoners surveyed said they felt unsafe at the time of the inspection.
This is the highest figure recorded in a reception prison in recent times.
The prison was particularly dangerous for men who had just arrived at the jail, who were at their most vulnerable and should have been helped to settle in.
A letter announcing the Urgent Notification at HMP Pentonville was sent to the Secretary of State on 16 July 2025.
The Urgent Notification is a system that was put in place in 2017 as an emergency means of raising urgent concerns about the state of a prison and bringing about fast action changes to correct the failures of the institution.
The Secretary of State must respond with an action plan within 28 days.
Chief Inspector Taylor suggested that the prison governor will require significant support from HM Prison and Probation Service to correct the errors in the failing prison.
According to the BBC, the Minister for Prisons, Lord Timpson, said: “The team is already working to urgently address the concerns raised.”
“We will publish an action plan in the coming weeks to support them in these efforts.”
Since 2022, nine other prisons across the UK have been issued with an Urgent Notification including HMP Wandsworth in south west London in May 2024 which was pulled up for its unchanged security measures following the high profile escape of Daniel Khalife in September 2023.
Featured image credit: Matthew Ansley, Unsplash
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