Earlier this month the government announced the closure of seven ‘old and uneconomic’ prisons across England in a bid to save £63m in running costs.

The plans include proposals to build a new ‘super-prison’ which would be around 25% bigger than the largest existing prison in Britain.

Among those to be closed is Kingston prison in Portsmouth which until now has housed a litho print business in which 18 prisoners were employed.

A digital workshop at Camp Hill on the Isle of Wight and a DTP unit at Shrewsbury narrowly escaped closure with those prisons due to be only partially closed.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) would not provide details about the business at Kingston Prison but said that the shop had already been disbanded with machines, including "equipment to undertake origination, litho up to B2, digital and finishing work" having been redeployed to other prisons.

According to the MoJ the Kingston print shop produced internal material and a small amount of local external work, although details of income and turnover were not revealed. The MoJ also declined to reveal what prisons the equipment had been redeployed to.

Around 500 prisoners work in 25 print workshops in prisons around England, through a specialised work and training initiative, providing print, signage and data processing services. One of the largest units, at HMP Maidstone now turns over around £100,000 of business a month.

A Prison Service spokeswoman said: "We want prisoners to learn the habit of real work inside prison so they are better placed to find a job on release and turn their backs on crime."

No comment was made on whether the prisoners who had lost their jobs as a results of Kingston's closure would be redeployed to print shops in other prisons.