Pentonville inspection report 2025
Report for Pentonville Prison
Summary
Pentonville is a historic, reception prison in North London that held 1,189 men at the time of this inspection. It is never an easy jail to run, with overcrowded cells, crumbling infrastructure and a fast-changing population that includes many men who are mentally ill, addicted to drugs and homeless, or who are involved with criminal gangs. At this inspection, however, we found a prison that had seriously deteriorated, with scores of poor in our healthy prison assessments for safety, purposeful activity and preparation for release, and not sufficiently good for respect. As a result of the very worrying findings, I issued an Urgent Notification to the Secretary of State. The treatment of new arrivals to the jail was completely inadequate; prisoners were placed in ill-equipped cells without some basic items such as bedding, pillows or cutlery. Due to the national population pressures, some men spent their first night in the prison housed not on the induction wing, but elsewhere in the jail where staff could not tell us who they were or which cell they were in.