HMP Peterborough defends single cells being used by two inmates after concerns of coronavirus raised

The privately run jail - the only prison in the country with both a male and a female wing - currently has 1,181 inmates, with Ministry of Justice figures showing 94 (8 per cent) were living in crowded conditions. Of those, all were prisoners doubled up in a single-occupancy cell.

Now there have been calls for action due to fears of coronavirus spreading through the jail.

An HMP Peterborough spokesperson said: “We have an agreed number of prisoner places which we make available to the prison service. These vary from time to time in relation to demand from the courts. All residents receive the appropriate standard of care in line with Prison Rules and our contract.”

Jails across England and Wales have been put on lockdown with all visits cancelled, however, it’s feared that prison crowding could lead to jails becoming overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Staff numbers in prisons are already stretched, with around 3,500 employees, representing about a tenth of the workforce, currently in self-isolation due to Covid-19.

Nationally, the prison overcrowding rate fell to 22.5% in 2019, from 24.2% in 2018.

Crowding was particularly concentrated in male local prisons, which usually serve a court in the local authority area and predominantly hold remand and short sentence prisoners.

The rate of crowding at Peterborough in 2018-19 was down from 93% in 2017-18. But a decade earlier, in 2008-09, the rate was 0%.

The Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody said prisons should be only for “serious and violent offenders” at this time.

Juliet Lyon, IAPDC chairman, said: “Ministers and officials are faced with some of the most difficult decisions they have ever had to make, about balance of risk and the best ways to keep people safe.

“In an unprecedented public health crisis, it is not fair or proportionate to commit prisoners, and staff responsible for them, to try to survive in insanitary, overcrowded institutions devoid currently of independent oversight.”

Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International UK, said that decreasing the prison population and the number of people in immigration detention centres is a “crucial means of slowing the spread of Covid-19”.

At the end of March, the Government announced that pregnant women in custody who don’t pose a high risk of harm to the public would be temporarily released from prison on an electronic tag, to protect them and their unborn child from coronavirus.

A Prison Service spokeswoman said: “We have robust and flexible plans in place to protect the lives of our staff, prisoners and visitors, based on the latest advice from Public Health England and the Department of Health and Social Care.”