GOVERNMENT officials have denied a North-East prison is dangerously overcrowded, despite it housing hundreds more prisoners than it was designed for.

The latest Home Office figures showed there were almost 800 prisoners in Durham Prison, in accommodation designed for 550.

However, a spokesman for the Home Office said last night that Durham Prison was not operating above capacity.

It has come under repeated attack from prisoners' rights groups for being too overcrowded and has one of the worst records for prison suicide in the country.

As of April, Durham Prison was operating at 141 per cent of its basic capacity.

However, the Home Office said it allowed for overcrowding in its "operational capacity".

The situation in Northallerton Prison was even worse, with 230 prisoners in accommodation designed for 150, meaning it is 154 per cent full.

Holme House Prison in Stockton has 960 prisoners in accommodation designed for 857.

Frances Crook, director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: "There is a serious problem with the prison population. There is enormous pressure on civil servants to try and cope and the prison service is just put under too much pressure."

Northallerton and Durham are among the top ten most overcrowded prisons in the country.

A spokesman for the Home Office said: "Our published figures are clear. These prisons are above the certified normal accommodation, which is the population level that we aspire to. But they are within the safe margin that allows the normal operation of the planned regime."

Five inmates committed suicide at Durham Prison between January 2004 and October last year, the fourth worst figure of any prison in the country.

Prison reform charities blame overcrowding for suicides, pointing to a direct link between the most cramped prisons and the highest number of suicides. In the decade to March 2004, 23 prisoners took their lives at Durham Prison.

Twice last year, Durham Coroner Andrew Tweddle wrote to the Prison Service to highlight shortcomings in the handling of vulnerable prisoners at Durham after suicide inquests.

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said prisons were "grossly overcrowded".

"The Government has neither the time, nor the money, to build its way out of this prison overcrowding crisis and instead, to cut crime, it should invest in enforced community work schemes for petty criminals and diversion of non-violent offenders into drug and alcohol treatment and mental healthcare," she said.