600 people die each year in state custody

Each year in England and Wales, 600 people die in state custody.

Data from the Forum for Preventing Deaths in Custody, includes deaths from suicides, murders and natural causes in prisons, police stations, immigration detention centres, young offenders' institutes and secure mental hospitals.

Overcrowding in prisons in England and Wales has coincided with an increase in the number of self-inflicted deaths this year. So far in 2007 there have been 68 cases compared with 46 at this point last year.

The mother of the youngest child to die in custody in the UK accused the government of doing too little to protect vulnerable inmates.

Carol Pounder's son, Adam Rickwood, was 14 when he hanged himself with his shoelaces while on remand at the Hassockfield secure training centre in County Durham in 2004.

The teenager had been restrained with a controversial "nose distraction technique" which involved him being punched in the face.