AUSTERITY cuts to the prison service have contributed to an alarming long-term rise in prisoner suicides, prison officers’ union POA said today.

Responding to a BBC Newsnight report highlighting a suicide rate over 10 years running at 220 per cent higher than earlier decades, the union said that “draconian” year-on-year budget cuts had resulted in 86,000 years of prison officer experience leaving the service.

Newsnight found that while prison suicides had averaged at 80 per year in the last decade — 10 times the level prevalent in the outside population — the specialist training aimed at preventing them was not being delivered to enough prison officers.