HM Prison Pentonville is a category B/C male prison located in the London Borough of Islington. The facility was opened in 1842 and is currently operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service, with a capacity of 1310 prisoners.
Millbank prison opened in 1816, and proved to be a successful method of dealing with large numbers of convicts. Other prisons of its nature began to emerge across the country, and in April 1840, construction began on Pentonville Prison.
It was designed by Captain Joshua Jebb and completed in 1842 at the cost of £84,186. The facility contained a central hall with five separate wings radiating outward from it, much like the design at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.
It is claimed that the design of Pentonville was based on the Separate system, which focused on keeping the inmates in solitary confinement. The prison was originally built to hold 520 prisoners, each separated in their own cell which was roughly 4 metres long, 2 metres wide and 3 metres high.
The guards had no visual access inside the cells from their central position, which afforded the inmates far more privacy than was initially intended. It is often disputed as to whether the prison was focused around Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon Plan, which involved constant surveillance. However, as the guards were unable to monitor the prisoners in their cells, many experts agree that the Panopticon Plan was not in use at Pentonville.
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