Campaigners have highlighted severe overcrowding at a North-East prison after a woman was found hanged in her cell.

Staff at Durham Prison found the 48-year-old, thought to be from the south, hanging from a home made ligature just before midnight yesterday.

They cut her down and unsuccessfully tried to revive her.

The prisoner had arrived from another jail just two days earlier and was the only occupant of her cell.

She was serving a sentence for wounding with intent and arson.

Police said the victim would not be named until relatives had been informed and that they were not treating the death as suspicious.

A post mortem examination was carried out yesterday, and an inquest is due to open next week.

The death comes after it emerged that Durham Prison had the highest suicide rate in England and Wales last year, with six inmates taking their own lives.

Enver Solomon, policy officer with the Prison Reform Trust, said: "We would say it's all due to overcrowding.

"Durham's normal capacity is 526 and at the end of January, the population was 700. It's absolute maximum is 736."

Last year, there were 94 prison suicides in England and Wales- the highest level since records began, with Durham's rate leaping from an average of one or two a year.

A spokeswoman for The Howard League for Penal Reform said the over stretched system was putting female prisoners at particular risk, such as by restricting contact with children.

She said: "We have already had six female suicides this year, and we only had nine in the whole of last year.

"There's a real problem with women at the moment."

A prison service spokesman said there would be a full investigation.