A NORTH-East jail has been named and shamed as one of the most violent prisons in the country.

Castington Young Offenders' Institution, in Northumberland, was named as the third most violent prison in England and Wales, with an assault rate of 64.2 per cent, compared with a national target of nine per cent, the Prison Reform Trust report found.

The figure was calculated by comparing incidents and prisoner numbers.

Last year a report said that violent scenes of fighting, bullying and smashing up cells in Castington were in danger of escalating out of control after 13 cells were smashed up in one night.

Overcrowded Holme House Pris-on, Teesside, which was hit by a riot four weeks ago, was criticised for locking prisoners up for the majority of the day, with an average of just 5.5 hours out of their cells each day.

It was also told it did not have enough activities for inmates, with just 15.5 hours per week compared with the national target of 24 hours.

But Kirklevington Grange Prison, a resettlement prison near Yarm, Teesside, saw no recorded assaults, one of the lowest rates of positive drug tests, and providing the most activities for prisoners - 51.6 hours of purposeful activity every week.

Nationally, there were 6,684 recorded assaults by prisoners in 2001-2002, an assault rate of 9.9 per cent.

The Prison Service also failed to meet its target for improving the basic skills of prisoners.

The report showed that considerable progress has been made in reducing escapes and drug use, with a recorded rate of drug use from random tests at 11.6 per cent, a big reduction on previous years and an improvement on a target of 12 per cent.

The report's author, Joe Levenson, said: "The Prisons League Table shows that the Prison Service is struggling to cope with a record prison population. A disturbing number of prisons are overcrowded, unsafe and provide inadequate purposeful activity for prisoners.

"Until these failing prisons are drastically improved, prisoners will continue to be held in damaging conditions with little done to prepare them for release."

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said that overcrowding threatened to "paralyse" the entire system.

Castington's governor refused to comment last night and Holme House's governor was unavailable for comment.