A CAMPAIGNER has condemned the continued holding of female prisoners at a jail more than a year after officials said it should stop.

Pauline Campbell, of Malpas, Cheshire, protested outside the pre-Victorian Dur-ham Jail in the wake of the death of prisoner Louise Giles, 20, of Sheffield, who was serving 14 years for stabbing a woman. She was found hanged in her cell.

Mrs Campbell, whose daughter Sarah, 18, killed herself in Styal Prison, Cheshire, has staged 15 demonstrations at jails where female prisoners have killed themselves.

She believes the prison authorities are failing in their duty of care to prisoners and that women, who are often vulnerable, are being "dump-ed" in jails where they do not get the help they need.

In May last year, the Home Office ordered the Prison Service to close Durham's female unit after the Chief Inspector of Prisons criticised conditions.

Mrs Campbell said Durham had a "fairly grim reputation" and that it was disgraceful the women's wing was still open more than a year later.

She said Louise Giles was a paranoid schizophrenic who should have been sent to a secure psychiatric unit. She said: "It is cruel to send sick people to a place of punishment."

A Prison Service spokes-man said the service was working to prevent prisoner suicides.

He said: "The closure of the female unit at Durham was announced in May 2004. The majority of prisoners had moved to other prisons by the end of 2004. A small number of women remain in a dedicated small unit, which is scheduled to close by the end of September and we are on target to do so."