No ice cream for those doing porridge in Pentonville

PRISONERS at one of the UK’S most rundown jails have been left without hot puddings and ice cream after equipment broke.

Two large kitchen mixers have been broken for two years at Pentonville jail which meant there were no cooked puddings, its Independent Monitoring Board reported. And 1,000 tubs of ice cream melted when two freezers at the prison broke in November.

The report painted a stark picture of an ageing and poorly maintained prison fabric. After an escape and murder at Pentonville in 2016, 800 cells needed either windows or grilles replaced, but only 480 had been completed by March this year.

Heating failed in some areas of the prison for days at a time, while infestations of vermin, masses of cockroaches, and fleas or pigeon mites were found in an industrial cleaning workshop.

Staff corruption resulted in several arrests for trafficking contraband, but a Victorian-era main gate made it impossible to install a full body scanner, the report found.

Nor was there space for all staff to have a locker to store their belongings.

The board said that improvised weapons are found in the jail on an almost daily basis.

Mobile phones from the tiniest Zanco brand to standard-sized smart phones are routinely found, smuggled in by prisoners, visitors or staff.

“Spice” was found to be regularly smoked through vapes as an alternative to tobacco (banned since March 2018). Sniffer dogs regularly detect the synthetic drug in letters posted in.

Violence had increased by more than 50 per cent since 2017, with officers and inmates frequently assaulted. In March, four officers and around 40 prisoners were assaulted each week.

A Prison Service spokesman said a new management team had made “significant improvements” since the inspection, including a new drugs strategy combining more cell searches with better addiction treatment, more money to refurbish cells, and action to tackle violence.