Pentonville prisoner stabbed to death

A 34 year old man was arrested following an incident at Pentonville prison, north London, in which three men were stabbed – one of them fatally. The dead man was a prisoner and was in his twenties. The two other prisoners who received stabbing wounds were aged 21 and 30 were taken to a hospital in East London.

Last night the police announced that they had opened a murder investigation. They confirmed that the murder victim was pronounced dead at the scene of the stabbing. His name is not being released until police have been able to inform his next of kin.

The stabbing comes a week after the annual conference of the Prison Governors Association, at which Governors warned that successive government cuts in the prison service had driven down standards and left prisons potentially much more dangerous places.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice responded to the Governors’ warnings by admitting that there had been a “significant increase in violence” in the UK’s prisons but declaring that it was “fully committed to addressing the problems”. It would seem that the “full commitment” came too late for one Pentonville prisoner.

•UPDATE: A second man, aged 24, has been arrested in the course of the murder investigation.

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