NO MATTER for what crimes or charges they are in custody, those held in prison should lose no more rights other than their liberty.

Indeed, their right to respect and understanding from those in whose care they are placed ought to be upheld at all times.

For if prisoners lose their dignity as well as their freedom, the system will simply release people into the community who are more brutalised and anti-social than they were before.

But, above all, the need for patience, tolerance and even compassion on the part of prison staff is vital for those dealing with the newly-admitted prisoners and those on remand who are confronted with the trauma of being behind bars, perhaps for the first time, and are inevitably racked by emotions ranging from bitterness and despair to fear and depression.

Yet, how distressing it is to find today that in Preston Prison - where four East Lancashire men, all of them remand prisoners, have killed themselves in the past two years - the approach of some prison officers is evidently quite the opposite. "Wholly inappropriate" is the description employed by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, Sir David Ramsbotham, in a damning report on conditions and attitudes at the jail.

And the severity of his criticism is such that he demands that prison officers who resisted or refused to reform should be sacked.

He is quite right to make this condition. Otherwise, the jail's shocking suicide record will become even worse.

Sir David makes no bones about it.

He says that until all staff there treat prisoners with the courtesy and respect due to another human being, the level of self-harm will not go down.

But down it must go.

With East Lancashire's MPs queuing up today to express alarm at this report, Home Secretary Jack Straw must follow it up with swift measures to implement every recommendation made by Sir David and to root out the staff whose brutish and callous attitudes are blamed for driving people to kill themselves.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.