MEN are being “cooped up like battery hens in overcrowded cells” at a jail that has had soaring levels of violence recorded, a prison reform charity warned today.

Campaigners from the Howard League for Penal Reform spoke out after a new inspection report on HMP Pentonville in north London warned of “clear and serious” problems.

Chief inspector of prisons Peter Clarke found Pentonville was “was overcrowded, had suffered from underinvestment and was in a generally poor physical state.”