PRISONER death rates have shot up in the last decade, with overcrowding and lack of staff to blame, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman warned yesterday.

The ombudsman’s new study shows that more than a third of prison deaths in 2013 were self-inflicted after the highest rise in years. 

Eighty-eight people took their own lives amid the crisis in prison overcrowding which experts said had slashed opportunities for rehabilitation through education and leisure. 

“Prison staff, managers and prisoners trained as Samaritan Listeners have worked hard year on year to reduce the number of tragic deaths in custody,” Prison Reform Trust director Juliet Lyon told the Star.

“It’s very disappointing to see this work set back by thoughtless policies, significant reductions in prison staffing levels and massive budget cuts.”

A further report published by the Ministry of Justice last month showed that the year 2013-14 had seen a record 225 deaths in prison custody.

The figures on assault and self-harming prisoners were equally alarming, with cases of convicts purposely injuring themselves growing by 750 last year. 

Ombudsman figures also show that a fifth of all imprisoned 18-24-year-olds who killed themselves suffered from bullying beforehand.

Yet few risk assessments were carried out and often the concerns of prisoners’ families were not heard by prison staff or management. 

Shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan was set to tell a prisons crisis summit today that “all of the evidence points towards meltdown in the prisons system.”

In the latest Labour attack on the Con-Dem government, he was to say: “The Tories are in denial about the scale of the crisis and offer no solutions to tackle the mounting chaos.”

But Mr Khan will not propose an investment in staff recruitment and training as proposed by prison reform bodies, instead promising increased inspections and standards. 

A Prison Service spokesman said: “We have a high proportion of people with mental health issues in the prison population and we are working very hard to understand the recent fluctuations in self-inflicted deaths.”