Regarding the coroner's verdict on the death in custody of Mr Kausmally (August 25), my ex-husband was in the next bed to Mr Kausmally in the suicide watch wing of the hospital, having been remanded in custody for offences for which he was subsequently found not guilty.

Many people who are remanded in custody are already suicidal, the hopeless condition of their lives having led them to contemplate or attempt suicide previously. Incarceration in animalistic conditions could be the final straw for an offender whose mental state has already been unbalanced.

What alarmed me was the high proportion of prisoners in Lewes prison who attempted or succeeded in taking their lives in the four months my ex-husband was in custody before his trial.

Life for a prisoner inside sounds barbaric.

When my ex-husband was in prison, the library was closed for half his stay owing to shortage of staff.

Prisoners were locked in their cells for 20 hours at weekends. When they were let out for socialising, gangs of prisoners used to roam around looking for vulnerable prisoners to beat up alone in their cells.

Anything you left in your cell when you went out was liable to be stolen.

My ex-husband had been staying in a hostel for the homeless prior to being remanded in custody.

When the hostel was informed of this, his belongings were packed in black plastic bin liners and stored. However, I assume this was because I had contacted Brighton Housing Trust to say I would collect them. I assume otherwise they would have been thrown in the dustbin.

When he was found not guilty, my ex-husband was let out of Lewes prison at 4pm on a Friday afternoon with only the clothes he was standing in, a little pocket money and nowhere to go. He was let out at the front gates of Lewes prison even though he had been taken to prison from Brighton.

Can you imagine how he must have felt? Locked up for four months and found not guilty, nowhere to go, in a near-suicidal mental state and the homelessness centre closed for the weekend.

I believe he slept in a park that weekend. His solicitor said the probation service had no legal duty to house him as he had been found not guilty.

The hopelessness and despair felt by prisoners is just a reflection of how they feel outside, with no place in society for them to return to. It is the Jeffrey Archers of this world who survive a prison sentence with few scars.

-Name and address supplied.