A series of "systematic errors" was yesterday found to have contributed to the suicide of Paul Day in Frankland Prison, Durham. Gavin Engelbrecht reports on the prisoner's experiences as revealed through inquest evidence.

PAUL Day was not a suicidal person. He would have to have felt totally abandoned and as if there was nobody he could turn to or trust before he would consider taking his own life.

This was the sobering assessment of Wandsworth Prison chaplain the Reverend Deacon Peter Heneghan. He came to the conclusion about Day's mental state even after the weeping prisoner had confided in the chaplain.

But weeks later, Day, 31 was found dead, despite being on suicide watch.

Misled into believing he was being transferred to a special witness protection unit, he found himself in segregation - a prison within a prison - at Durham's Frankland Prison.

An inquest heard he spent his last 51 days in isolation, 300 miles from his family in Essex, suffering the relentless abuse from fellow prisoners for being an informer and taking part in one of the biggest dirty protests seen in a mainland British jail.

Over the past five weeks, Durham Coroner Andrew Tweddle has heard about Day's final months, which began with a robbery spree in the North of England, in which he netted £4,500 to fund his heroin addiction.

Before he could be arrested for these offences he was apprehended for two attempted robberies for which he was convicted and sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison, in February 2001.

He was sentenced to a further six months for assaulting a sex offender and then did the rounds of some of the toughest institutions in the system, including Parkhurst, Pentonville, Cardiff, Highdown and finally Frankland.

It was while in Wandsworth that Day, angered that an officer had allegedly revealed his status as an informer, climbed a two-storey gantry.

Principal prison officer Andy Toppin told the inquest that, as he tried to talk him down, other officers had shown "unprofessional" behaviour and urged Mr Day to jump.

And, instead of isolating the area, they let in other prisoners who joined in the chorus of abuse. Day was persuaded to come down but made another attempt, falling a 25ft drop with a noose around his neck. Officers managed to save his life.

During the inquest, his mother Pauline described taking a call from Day. She said: "He was saying he couldn't take it any more and he loved me.

"I begged him not to put the phone down. I knew he was going to do something serious to harm himself."

When staff at Wandsworth Prison planned to transfer Day, his family resisted the move.

Mrs Day said: "I knew that if he went on to one more segregation unit it might be the end of him. He couldn't stand the isolation and loneliness."

But governor Phillip Riley suggested he needed a more therapeutic environment and assured Mrs Day he would be placed on a special protection wing and would be given a fresh start where no one would know he was an informer.

Mrs Day said: "I persuaded Paul to make this move, I gave him my personal guarantee he would be safe."

But Frankland did not have the special unit Mr Riley had expected - a mistake he told the inquest had been on his conscience.

Edward Tullett, the government inspector in charge of a second internal inquiry into Day's death, told the hearing: "I think Wandsworth was just desperate to move him on."

Within 20 minutes of arriving at Frankland, in August 2002, Day had been identified as a "grass", with prisoners screaming abuse at him and throwing urine over him. He wrote his mother: "I was so broken. I stood there in my prison slippers and once I got back in my cell I couldn't stop crying for hours."

Day went on to take part in a dirty protest, joining with other prisoners who smeared themselves and their cell walls with excrement and flooded the cell with urine.

Mr Tweddle, cross examining segregation unit head governor Anthony Lamb, described the dirty protest as a wound and said he it found it strange that management did not find out what was the problem behind it.

Prisoners told the inquest, that prison officers had intimidated and abused Day, but Paul Sirrell, one of the prison officers, insisted tempers had never flared and staff had acted entirely professionally. The inquest jury agreed and found no such abuse had occurred.

Because he was on a self harm watch, officers were supposed to have monitored Day at frequent intervals.

But records showed gaps of an hour and longer when he was not checked. Two officers had said they had last seen him alive at 10.25pm on October 2, 2002, but the jury found this was not the case.

Mr Heneghan, in giving his evidence, said: "He'd done things wrong, but Paul was a young man who deserved the best that people could give him and somewhere along the line that's failed."