'My Sarah killed herself'

The tragic suicide of a teenager who killed herself on her first full day in prison has prompted fresh demands for a public inquiry into conditions in women's jails.

Campaigners have joined the anguished mother of Sarah Campbell in seeking an investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death, after it was claimed that prison staff failed to heed warnings she was a high suicide risk.

Sarah, a gifted schoolgirl who slipped into heroin addiction after suffering clinical depression, had just spent her first night in jail at the start of a three-year sentence for manslaughter. She and a friend had harassed 72-year-old Amrit Bhandari for money and he died of a heart attack.

A probation officer and a psychiatric nurse had warned she was very vulnerable and should be watched every 15 minutes. Instead, Sarah was put on an hourly watch at Styal women's prison in Cheshire. By the time officers got to her, she had taken a massive overdose of anti-depressants and died in hospital, three days before her 19th birthday.

Sarah is one of eight women who have killed themselves behind bars already this year - compared to 31 in the previous five years - as the female prison population has more than doubled in a decade.

Her mother Pauline, a 55-year-old NHS administrator from Cheshire, said: "Sarah was mentally ill and needed proper psychiatric care, not a punitive regime." She said she only heard Sarah had died hours afterwards, as no one at the prison phoned her. Weeping, she said: "Because no one contacted me, I couldn't even hold her hand while she was dying.

"The prison ignored two professional warnings at Sarah's trial, one by a probation officer, the other by a psychiatric nurse, that she was a high suicide risk and should be on a 15-minute watch."

She called for an independent public inquiry into her daughter's death to prevent further tragedies. A spokesman for the Home Office said it could not discuss the details of an individual prisoner's case.

The Howard League for Penal Reform backed Pauline. A spokesman said: "We have a terrible crisis in our prisons. We are concerned at the dramatic increase in the number of women killing themselves in custody. There must be a public investigation into every death."

Sarah had been convicted of the manslaughter, in May last year, of Mr Bhandari, and while her behaviour cannot be excused, her death in January raises the question of whether someone with her history should have been sent to prison rather than a secure psychiatric-unit. More women are entering the prison system, many of whom are vulnerable and drugdependent.

Sarah became hooked on heroin when she was 17. Her parents separated when she was one year old and divorced two years later. She had not seen her father, who was in the oil business, since she was four.

"She had very low self-esteem, and felt abandoned and rejected because of the absence of contact," said Pauline. At 14, Sarah began to lose her way. She missed so much school through illness that she left at 16 with no qualifications. She went to art college, but barely completed a term.

She began taking cannabis at 16, and by 17 was hooked on heroin. Pauline said she had no idea of the extent of problem until police phoned to say Sarah had been found with Class A drugs, and was addicted to methadone and heroin. She tried to talk to her daughter, but in January 2002, Sarah came to London to stay with friends.

Her mother says she knew she would be very vulnerable in a big city: "I was horrified when she told me how easy it was to get heroin in London. She just had to go the medical centre chemist to get her methadone prescription, hang around until she saw another addict getting one too, then ask where she could get some heroin."

The manslaughter took place soon after Sarah returned home. She was arrested and held on remand at Styal, her mother visiting every other day. "Often there would be marks across her neck where she had tried to hang herself, or her arms would be stitched up where she had been cutting herself," said Pauline.

Her one lifeline, said her mother, was that the prison psychiatrist told her she would be sent to a secure psychiatric hospital rather than prison if she was convicted.

Last November she was released on bail on condition she lived with her mother. It was a happy time. At the trial at Mold Crown Court in Wales, she pleaded guilty - unlike her co-defendant - and became petrified she would be attacked in prison as a "grass".

Whether she smuggled the antidepressants she used to kill herself into prison, or obtained them inside, will be revealed at the inquest, her mother hopes.

"I do know she was weeping profusely on the Friday night she arrived," said Pauline. "On the Saturday morning [the day she died] she was noted as acting strangely. Perhaps she thought if she took enough pills, she would be taken to a secure hospital.

"Tragically, it all went wrong."