SARAH CAMPBELL WAS ALWAYS a talented child. You get a general idea of her achievements if you browse for a while in her mother’s sitting room. There is something of Sarah in every corner: the cluster of tennis trophies, the art works that were often displayed in local exhibitions, the purple belt in karate. The family photo album charting skiing trips, birthday parties and drama classes tells the story of a young girl shaping up for a promising future.

But the sympathy cards that litter the room tell a different story. On January 17 this year Sarah was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. She was sent to Styal women’s prison in Cheshire, and the next day she was dead. She had taken an overdose of what were believed to be prescription drugs. It was three days before her 19th birthday.

Somehow, despite so many advantages in life, Sarah had ended up a heroin abuser. It is a miserable story. One day, desperate for a fix, she and a friend were begging in Chester town centre. They hassled an elderly man for money and, petrified, he fell down and died. The victim, Amrit Bhandari, 72, had suffered a heart attack and the pair were found guilty of manslaughter. The case was unique because the manslaughter conviction was based on a harassment charge rather than something more serious, such as robbery.

This article does not seek to excuse Sarah’s behaviour. It merely asks how an 18-year-old girl with a known history of depression came to injure herself fatally within hours of being received into Her Majesty’s care.

Sarah, you see, is only a small detail on a very depressing canvas. The number of women taking their own lives in prison is rising at a shocking rate. This week another casualty, Jolene Willis, 24, was found hanged in her cell at Styal. She was serving four months for theft.

Between 1990 and 1995 seven women committed suicide in prisons in England and Wales, an average of 1.2 a year. In the first four months of this year alone, seven have already taken their own lives. Last year nine female prisoners committed suicide, the worst toll on record. At the current rate, 2003 will overtake it.

Women are not the only problem. Last year 85 men took their own lives in overcrowded prisons, up from 66 in 2001. What is so disturbing about women is that their deaths are disproportionately high. They make up only six per cent of the prison population yet account for 11 per cent of the “SIDS” — self-inflicted deaths.

Unlike males, most female prisoners have not committed violent crime; their offences are mostly linked to theft, drugs or unpaid bills and they are less equipped to deal with being separated from their children. Nearly all will try to harm themselves in some way. The methods they find are gruesome but ingenious. Scouring pads and hairgrips are used to maim. One young woman choked herself to death by swallowing toilet tissue. Yet the number of women being sent to jail has more than doubled to 4,200 in the past decade. The prison service is understaffed and undertrained. Officers have less opportunity to get to know prisoners individually and thus spot the danger signs. Sarah had first been diagnosed with depression at 15. She had had no contact with her father since she was four, but her mother tried to give her a good education and a stable upbringing, both at their North Wales cottage and at their current home in Malpas, Cheshire.

She hoped that she wouldn’t go to prison, but a secure psychiatric hospital instead. When she discovered that she was going to Styal she was distraught. At court a liaison probation officer and a duty psychiatric nurse warned that she may harm herself. The last thing she said to her mother, Pauline, was: “Mum, why aren’t they taking me to a hospital?”

Pauline Campbell doesn’t really know what happened after that. From the scant information she has been given, she understands that around teatime on January 18, Sarah asked to see a prison officer in her cell and said she had taken some tablets. It is unclear what happened next but an inquest, which will not be held for several months, will examine if there was a delay in getting Sarah to hospital. What is known is that at 7.56 that evening she was pronounced dead at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester.

Mrs Campbell, a former lecturer in NHS administration, had been out visiting friends that night. When she returned she discovered police had pushed a note through her door asking her to contact them. On her answering machine were three urgent messages from the prison. The next minutes were a blur as she dialled the numbers. No one was available and, nauseous with terror, she was forced to leave messages. At around midnight a police officer called back. Mrs Campbell remembers the words: “I’m sorry to tell you that your daughter has died.” She says: “He didn’t even ask me if I was on my own.” The next thing she knew, she was screaming.

On the Monday, her own birthday, Mrs Campbell had to identify her daughter’s body in a hospital mortuary. Sarah was her only child. A postmortem examination had already been conducted without her knowledge. As many people whose relatives have died in prison discover, normal courtesies don’t always apply.

Helen Sacker knows this all too well. When her daughter Sheena Creamer, 22, hanged herself in her cell at New Hall prison, Wakefield, the first she knew of it was when it was announced on the local TV news. She collapsed.