Leanne Gidney

 Aged 18, hanged herself at Brockhill women’s prison in Worcestershire in January 2003. She was 12 days into her sentence.

A heroin addict and single mother of a two-year-old son, Gidney had convictions stretching back to her final sentence, for robbery. The Rugby teenager had stolen £1 from three friends. A report in 2002 by Anne Owers, the chief inspector of prisons, criticised Brockhill for its drastic understaffing and its lack of adequate care for young inmates. Gidney’s death sparked further criticism, notably from Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, who accused the Home Office of providing insufficient support for women drug users in prisons.

Joseph Scholes

Aged 16, hanged himself in Stoke Heath young offenders’ institution in March 2002, nine days after beginning his sentence.

After his parents’ divorce, the Manchester teenager was subjected to repeated sexual abuse by a member of his father’s family. Five months before his death, he took an overdose and jumped from a window. He was convicted of affray for starting a brawl with the ambulance staff who was treated his injures. Placed in "voluntary care”, Scholes was soon under arrest again, this time for robbery. But before appearing in court he slashed his own face thirty times with a knife. In spite of his condition, the judge presiding over the teenager’s case decided his circumstances were not sufficiently "exceptional” to warrant suspension of his two-year sentence. "The day he was sentenced, I knew he was going to die,” Scholes’s mother, Yvonne, said.

Sarah Campbell

Aged 18, originally from North Wales, took an overdose of antidepressants at Styal women’s prison in Cheshire in January 2003.

When she was found guilty of manslaughter, the teenager had been distraught to discover that she was going to prison and not to a secure psychiatric hospital. Campbell was diagnosed with depression at the age of 15, but remained a talented artist and tennis player, intending to study fine art at university. She became addicted to heroin. She and another addict had stolen a 72-year-old man’s wallet. The victim was literally frightened to death by the incident, dying of a heart attack caused by shock. Pauline Campbell said of her daughter:”I think she felt rejected, abandoned. She was of above average intelligence and I don’t think she could cope with what was happening to her”.

Anthony Redding

Aged 16, from Coventry, hanged himself in his cell at Brinsford young offenders’ institution near Wolverhampton in February 2001.

In the days before his suicide, Redding complained of hearing voices, specifically that of his dead grandmother. After his parents removed him from school because of bullying, he became involved in car crime, and was given a four-month sentence for motoring offences in January 2001. He was frightened about returning to Brinsford, having undergone a two-month spell in custody.

Before his death, he was placed on a five-minute suicide watch – he had already tried to kill himself four times since his sentencing. But despite a history of self-harm, he was kept alone in a single cell. His mother, Helen Redding, said: "Antony did not get the level of care he needed. He was a sixteen-year-old lad and his death was a cry for help”.