Prison service 'failed' woman who killed herself

The grim pattern to Louise Giles's short life was set at the age of 13 when she took her first overdose. She tried to kill herself throughout her teens, both inside prison, where staff struggled to cope with her acute psychiatric problems, and in the outside world. Three months after being sent to Durham prison, she was found dead in her cell with a ligature around her neck. She was just 20.

Recording a verdict of accidental death on Giles, an inquest jury directed a string of devastating criticisms at the Durham regime.

In the week that ministers announced a massive expansion of prison capacity and delayed a decision on reforming women's jails, the jury's conclusions have raised fresh question-marks over whether too many people with severe mental health problems were being failed by the penal system.

No one involved in the Giles case she had been jailed for life after stabbing a woman to death in a nightclub brawl doubted that she needed to be locked up in the public interest.

But penal reformers argued last night that the prison authorities contributed to her early death by ignoring all the warnings about her history of paranoid schizophrenia and self-harm.

Between the ages of 13 and 19, Giles had taken 20 overdoses and attempted suicide or self-harm a further 40 times in New Hall prison, near Wakefield.

After her conviction for murder in May 2005 she was sent to the women's unit at Durham, where she tried to harm herself 23 times in the three months before her death.

The inquest heard she was one of just six women held in high-security conditions on Durham's I wing, which had been recommended for closure the previous year.

Julie Patterson, a cellmate, described her as a "young, blonde small girl who was quite bubbly and had a problem with serious self-harming".

In a statement she complained that many prison officers were new and inexperienced and "sat around doing sudoku, crosswords and reading Take a Break".

She also suggested that Giles may have been "pushed over the edge" by not having any tobacco or an officer slamming her cell door.

Another prisoner, Deborah Taylor, claimed staff used to taunt Giles and nicknamed her "smelly" because of her poor hygiene.

Her television and radio were taken away a week before she died, although these were considered a distraction from "voices" in her head telling to harm herself. The jury at Chester-le-Street, Co Durham, denounced conditions on the wing as unsuitable for such a highly disturbed inmate.

It protested that staff were not properly trained in mental mental health problems, and condemned the failure to act on warnings to close the wing.

The jury concluded: "We believe that on the nights leading up to and including the night of Louise's death, she was not appropriately cared for. Signs of emotional distress were overlooked."

Deborah Coles, co-director of the campaign group Inquest, said: "Louise Giles died as a direct result of the failure of Prison Service officials and ministers to act on the clear warnings that there was a real risk of suicide unless action was taken. Their complacency and inaction is a clear case of corporate manslaughter for which the Prison Service should be brought to account.

"Punishing women with severe mental problems by incarcerating them in such alienating conditions was cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."

The unit closed a month after Giles became the seventh woman in a three-year period to take her life on I-wing.

But the tragic toll continues elsewhere seven women prisoners have killed themselves so far this year.