A CONVICTED female drug dealer has been found hanged in her cell - less than a day after being given a prison sentence.

Her death came only days after a reception wing was opened at the jail, designed to give vulnerable new inmates an easier introduction to prison life.

Rebecca Turner, 22, from York, was jailed for 27 months by a Crown Court judge on Tuesday. But early the following morning she was found hanged in her cell at Low Newton prison on the outskirts of Durham.

A prison officer spoke to her at about 8.10am, but when the officer returned to her cell at 8.55am she was hanging from a ligature.

Staff tried to resuscitate her with the help of prison health workers and paramedics but less than half-an-hour later, she was pronounced dead by a doctor.

Turner was being held in a 40-place reception unit that was opened at the prison earlier this month.

Prison governor Dave Thompson said the death, the first at Low Newton in seven years, had hit everybody very hard.

"It has ripped the heart out of the staff and the other prisoners," he said.

"She was received here just on the Monday and neither ourselves nor any other criminal justice agencies had noted any area of concern which would have warranted closer watch."

Turner was jailed by a judge at York Crown Court after admitting two charges of being concerned with the supply of crack cocaine last summer. She was also in breach of a combination order imposed for shoplifting.

Turner, who was being treated with methadone to combat her drug addiction, had been caught in a police sting as she and Wayne Ronald Coxon acted as "doorkeepers" at a crack house in Newborough Street, York.

Officers carrying out a secret surveillance operation on the suspected drugs den recorded that the address attracted more than 150 visitors in one week.

Coxon, 23, was jailed for a total of three-and-a-half years for his part in the operation and for breaking a drug order imposed for a string of shoplifting offences.