HM Prison Pentonville (informally "The Ville") is an English Category B men's prison, operated by His Majesty's Prison Service. Pentonville Prison is not in Pentonville, but is located further north, on the Caledonian Road in the Barnsbury area of the London Borough of Islington, north London.
The prison today
Pentonville is a local prison, holding Category B/C adult males remanded by local magistrates' courts and the Crown Court, and those serving short sentences or beginning longer sentences. The prison is divided into these main wings:
- A wing: Early days Centre
- C wing: Remands and Convicted Prisoners
- D wing: Vulnerable Prisoners
- E wing: Remands and Convicted (Care & Separation Unit)
- F wing: Detoxification Unit (F1, F2, F3) and Remands and Convicted Prisoners (F4, F5)
- G wing: Remands and Convicted Prisoners
- G1: Neurodiversity wing
- J wing: Enhanced wing (Drug free)
G wing has an education department, a library and workshops.
History
19th century
The first modern prison in London, Millbank, opened in 1816. It had separate cells for 860 prisoners and proved satisfactory to the authorities who started building prisons to deal with the rapid increase in numbers caused by the ending of capital punishment for many crimes and a steady reduction in transportation.
thumb|Pentonville prison in 1842
Two acts of Parliament allowed for the building of Pentonville prison, designed by Captain Joshua Jebb, Royal Engineers, for the detention of convicts sentenced to imprisonment or awaiting transportation. Construction started on 10 April 1840 and was completed in 1842. The cost was £84,186 12s 2d.
thumb|An isometric drawing of Pentonville prison, from an 1844 report by [[Joshua Jebb, Royal Engineers]]
It had a central hall with four radiating wings, all visible to staff at the centre. This design, intended to keep prisoners isolated – the "separate system" first used at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia – was not, as is often thought, a panopticon. Officers had no view into individual cells from their central position. Pentonville was designed to hold 520 prisoners under the separate system, each having his own cell, long, wide and high with little windows on the outside walls and opening onto narrow landings in the galleries.
They were "admirably ventilated", a visitor wrote, and had a water closet, though these were replaced by communal, foul-smelling recesses because they were constantly blocked and the pipes were used for communication. The chaplains were very influential, making individual cell visitations, urging the convicts to reform, and supervising the work of the schoolmasters.
thumb|250px|right|[[Penal treadmill at Pentonville in 1895]]
Mental disturbances were common. An official report admitted that "for every sixty thousand persons imprisoned in Pentonville there were 220 cases of insanity, 210 cases of delusion, and forty suicides".
20th century
Prisoners under sentence of death were not housed at Pentonville Prison until the closure of Newgate in 1902 when Pentonville took over executions in north London. Condemned cells were added and an execution room built to house Newgate's gallows. At the same time, Pentonville took over from Newgate the function of being the training location for future executioners.
Irish revolutionary Roger Casement was hanged there on 3 August 1916 and his remains interred at the site until 1965. Udham Singh, the Indian revolutionary, who shot and killed Sir Michael O'Dwyer (Governor of the Punjab during the Amritsar Massacre), was also held in custody and hanged at Pentonville (1940). Karl Hultén, involved in the Cleft chin murder, was executed 8 March 1945.
Between 1902 and 1961, a total of 120 men were executed at Pentonville including Dr. Crippen and John Christie. All the executed were buried in unmarked graves, in the prison cemetery located at . The final execution took place on 6 July 1961 when Edwin Bush, aged 21, was hanged.
21st century
thumb|right|250px|Pentonville prison, 2013
In May 2003, an inspection report from the Chief Inspector of Prisons blamed overcrowding for poor standards at HMP Pentonville. The inspection found that basic requirements for inmates like telephones, showers and clean clothes were not being provided regularly enough. The report also noted a lack of access to education for inmates and inadequate specialised procedures for vulnerable prisoners. The inspection report also praised a number of areas of the prison including the healthcare department, the prison drugs strategy and programmes for reducing offending behaviour.
A new hospital wing, built at a cost of £15 million, was opened at Pentonville Prison in early 2005. Months later, inspectors reported that despite the new facilities, primary care for prisoners such as clinical supervision of nurses and drug dispensing practices were inadequate. A year later, 14 prison officers at Pentonville were suspended after allegations of trafficking and "inappropriate relations" with inmates.
In August 2007, a report from the Pentonville's Independent Monitoring Board stated that the prison was infested with rats and cockroaches and had insufficient levels of staff. The report also criticised the detention conditions for mentally ill inmates, the reception facilities for new prisoners and the library provision at the jail.
In October 2009, two prison managers were warned about gross misconduct after an investigation found that 11 inmates had been temporarily transferred to HMP Wandsworth before inspections. The prisoners, two of whom attempted suicide immediately after the transfer, were transferred two days before an inspection in order to manipulate prison population figures.
A further report released in June 2015 indicated that Pentonville had "deteriorated even further" since the previous inspection. The report highlighted that many inmates were left without basic provisions, including pillows and utensils, and there were also "mounds of rubbish" on the floors and cockroach infestations. Frances Cook, chief executive for the Howard League for Penal Reform, commented "when a prison is asked to hold 350 more prisoners than it is designed for, we should not be surprised when it fails".
In 2015, the justice secretary, Michael Gove, described Pentonville as "the most dramatic example of failure" within the prisons estate.
A prisoner, Jamal Mahmoud, was stabbed to death on 18 October 2016 and there were six other stabbings in the following weeks up to 8 November. Mike Rolfe, chair of the Prison Officers’ Association, said: