PRISON deaths and suicides have reached their highest level for more than a decade, official figures showed yesterday.

Ministry of Justice statistics showed that 267 people died in prisons in England and Wales in the 12 months to the end of September 2015, 95 of them suicides and seven homicides.

In the 12 months before there were 234 deaths, 91 of which were suicides and three homicides.

Howard League for Penal Reform campaigns director Andrew Neilson said it was “surely evident” that staffing cuts — particularly those seeing more experienced prison officers going — were to blame.

“Prisons have become more dangerous and more deadly, and that does not bode well for communities when prisoners are released from such pressured environments,” he said.

“Radical reform is required, or the human cost of our failing prisons will continue to rise.”

Shadow justice secretary Lord Falconer said the figures “once again lay bare the true state of our prisons and the damage that the Tories have done to our criminal justice system.”

He said: “If ministers are serious about reform the rhetoric needs to match the reality and they need to urgently tackle the chaos in our prisons.”

The publication of the figures comes on the same day that Labour peer Lord Harris slammed the government over its failure to take action on recommendations he published in a report on prison suicides earlier this year.

The review of self-inflicted deaths among prisoners aged 18-24 in England and Wales was published in June yet since then the peer said there had been “complete silence” from the ministry on how it would respond.

“I just think there’s a lack of concern,” he said.

“I suspect there’s a rearguard action from the prison service, who find some of our findings really rather worrying, because it recognises that they simply don’t know what’s going on in prisons and that prisons at the moment are under enormous stress and presumably will get more so with the cuts that are just around the corner.”