Some officers seem traumatised by the constant life-saving

Those inmates considered most at risk are taken to a separate unit - the old segregation block now renamed the CSRU (care, separation and support unit) - where some women are put on 24-hour suicide watch and monitored continuously by a prison officer sitting outside their gated cell.

Flo has been taken there after repeated attempts to strangle herself.

"I just want to escape from the person I am," she says, "because the way I see it I won't be any more harm or upset anybody else any more if I'm dead."

Flo is on remand at Styal for threats to kill. Her problems stem from a difficult childhood, she says, and like many of her fellow inmates, she blames herself for the troubles.

One of my fears is that we might be perpetuating the level of self-harm by bringing together some of the most damaged people in society Styal governer Steve Hall Women on the edge (pt1)

"Well I must need to be punished for the way I've got brought up like hit, abused, children's home - you're bad, they don't want you, drummed in me head all the time.

"I've never forgiven them for what they did to me and why it went on and nobody did nothing about it."

The 24-hour suicide watches can go on for weeks and the women hate it, seeing the removal of privacy or dignity as a form of extra punishment.

The officers are no happier about it - as one commented: "We would like not to watch them when they go to the toilet but that would be an ideal time for them to put something round their neck."

In the past these women would have been kept in strip cells and in "strip dress". But deprivation of belongings and clothes tended to depress and disturb the women even more and so this is now reserved for only the most extreme cases.

Styal prison has assumed the reputation of something of a suicide factory

And though they know they are being watched, the women still try to tie ligatures around their necks. Staff go in to remove them and sometimes end up in a fight as the women struggle to stop them intervening.

Nearly every officer I spoke to told me that they saved lives on a regular basis but many seemed to be wary of speaking on camera. Some who had been involved in the six recent deaths at Styal were still dealing with the emotions that surrounded these events, and the fear of another suicide was clearly a major concern.

The sheer number of suicide attempts at Styal is bewildering and Steve Hall, the prison governor, recognises it is such.

"This level of intensity of self-harm is not normal and one of the fears I think for me and colleagues is that we might be actually perpetuating that level of self-harm by bringing together some of the most damaged people in society," he says.

"There is a real danger that we normalise that behaviour and people feed off of each other. It's a sense of security, it's what other people do, it's how you get attention."

Fortunately, says Mr Hall, there has not been a death at Styal for some time.

"But there will be another death here because you can't have a situation where people continue to do things that are really risky. Sooner or later something's going to go wrong and those women are going to die."

ReadPart 1 of Rachel Coughlan's article.