‘Lacklustre’ response to suicides at London jail despite warnings, report finds

Conditions at HMP Pentonville worsen further nearly a year after damning watchdog report

The Prison Inspectorate said conditions in HMP Pentonville had worsened over the past year despite a highly critical report by the watchdog last April (Getty)

A prison in London has shown a “lacklustre” response to self-inflicted deaths despite major warnings that it must improve and widespread concerns over failures across the penal estate to respond to inmate suicides.

The Prison Inspectorate said conditions in HMP Pentonville have worsened over the past year despite its report published in April last year warning that there had been an “alarming” rise in violence and drugs in the jail, with inmates forced to live in cells without lighting or hot water.

Violence in HMP Pentonville had soared by more than 50 per cent since 2017, last year’s report found, and self-harm as an expression of despair continued to be a daily occurrence, with reported incidents increasing by 20 per cent, from 500 to 598 in a year.

In a separate report last year, the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) said that there was a “lack of decency” in the prison’s physical environment that was deemed “incompatible” with maintaining humanity and dignity.

Now, an independent review of progress (IRP) carried out last month to assess key concerns and recommendations from the Prison Inspectorate’s 2019 report found there was “cause for continued concern”, with prison inspectors finding that HMP Pentonville showed the poorest progress in any IRP since the new type of follow-up visits were introduced by the Inspectorate in April last year.

The chief inspector of prisons, Peter Clarke, said the implementation of safety strategies had been “neither swift nor effective”, with overall levels of violence having further increased by 10 per cent, and assaults on staff rising by 30 per cent.

There had been four self-inflicted deaths between the Prison Inspectorate’s reports in 2017 and 2019, but Mr Clarke said the response to recommendations made by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) following its investigations into the deaths had been “inadequate”.

Since the April 2019 report, there had been three self-inflicted deaths, which were under investigation by the PPO at the time of the follow-up. Mr Clarke said care processes for those in crisis were still found not to be managed effectively – and that the implementation of recommendations from previous self-inflicted deaths could only be described as “lacklustre”.

The Prison Inspectorate’s findings come after a report by the charity Inquest found that warnings over prison suicides were being “systematically ignored” by the government, with repeated safety failures – including inadequacies in mental and physical healthcare, communication systems and emergency responses – contributing to a “national scandal” of high levels of deaths in custody across England and Wales.

The highest number of prisoner deaths was recorded in 2016, at 354 – more than double the number of deaths a decade earlier. Since then, the annual toll has remained at historically high levels, surging by 23 per cent in the year to October 2019, with the rate of inmates taking their own lives currently at one every four days.

Mr Clarke said HMP Pentonville had made good progress in tackling its significant drug problem, and inspectors also observed some very good interactions between staff and prisoners during their visit, although some prisoners reported that staff could be rude and unhelpful.

Managers understood that boredom and inactivity contributed to bad behaviour, violence and poor wellbeing, yet prisoners still spent far too long locked in their cells during the working day, the report noted.

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Mr Clarke concluded: “I was so concerned by the findings of this IRP ... that I wrote to the secretary of state expressing my serious concern at the lack of progress since the last inspection. I was particularly disappointed to see that in many areas little or nothing had been done until very shortly before the IRP took place.”

The prisons minister, Lucy Frazer QC, said: “We’ve taken immediate action to improve HMP Pentonville by appointing a new governor and giving the prison intensive support through our new performance programme.

“I am confident this will stabilise the prison through additional staff, enhanced training, and X-ray style security to reduce the illicit drugs which drive violence. In addition, soon every offender will have a key worker to provide one-to-one support and help us identify those who are most vulnerable.”