A senior coroner has condemned the ‘inhuman’ and ‘indefensible’ treatment of a man who committed suicide, which saw him given an indefinite prison sentence for 17 years. Tom Osborne, the senior coroner for Milton Keynes, said Scott Rider had given up all hope of being released before taking his own life at HMP Woodhill in June 2022.
He served a prison sentence for public protection (IPP) after being convicted of grievous bodily harm in 2005. The sentence had a minimum term of 23 months, but no end date.
Days before he died, Rider told a prison official that he had lost hope that he would ever be released. He said it was “disgusting” that he was still locked up, that his crime did not warrant an endless sentence, and that the IPP sentence had ruined his life. “He did things wrong and he deserved to be punished, but he didn’t deserve it,” said his sister Michelle Mahon.
Osborne, who led the investigation into Rider’s death, has now written to the Ministry of Justice calling for a review of all prisoners serving IPP sentences.
The controversial punishment was introduced in 2005 and abolished in 2012 after much criticism. But it was not retrospectively abolished and almost 3,000 people who were given an IPP are still in prison. The sentences have no end date and prisoners remain in custody until they can prove they do not pose a risk.
Many of the IPPs have been convicted of low-level crimes such as theft, including one person who spent 12 years in prison after stealing a mobile phone. Even if IPP prisoners are released, they remain on license and there is a threat that the sentence will be reactivated at any time.
In a report on preventing future deaths sent to prisons minister Edward Argar, Osborne warned that without urgent action more people could die. He said Governor Woodhill told him she believed IPPs were “indefensible” and that she and her fellow governors would welcome an intervention.
“You must conclude that his treatment was inhumane and indefensible and that if no action is taken to review all prisoners sentenced to IPP, there is a risk of further deaths,” he wrote of Rider’s case.
Rider’s sister said the verdict robbed her brother “of the chance to have a family and the chance to turn his life around.”
She said her brother had been the “golden child” growing up but started using drugs in his teens and racked up convictions for crimes including theft and burglary.
In 2003, Rider was jailed for assaulting their father. He was later released and, Mahon says, went about cleaning up his life and finding a girlfriend. But in 2005, while still on license for the earlier offence, he was arrested again after assaulting a colleague and given an IPP sentence with a minimum tariff of 23 months.
Mahon, an estranged nurse from Durham, only found out he was serving an IPP sentence after his death. She said she had never heard of them and was dismayed that this meant the length of his sentence was in the hands of a parole board rather than a judge.
She is now campaigning for the cases of all IPP prisoners to be reviewed. “I don’t condone what Scott did. In 17 years he committed 47 offenses and was convicted of 22 crimes. But I think these punishments are inhumane and should be abolished. To get a 23 month prison sentence and serve 17 years… how can they justify that?” said Mahon.
She said she felt her brother had been punished for withdrawing from the system. During his 17 and a half years behind bars, Rider was repeatedly transferred between prisons; was insulting to staff; and seemed depressed. In 2018, he was convicted of racially abusing a prison guard.
In May 2022, he told a prison worker that he found Woodhill Prison “despicable” and that it was “driving him insane.” He refused to participate in the parole proceedings. When he died in June 2022, he had already been in self-isolation in his cell for 200 days and had stopped showering. The inquest into Rider’s death found that it was common for IPP prisoners to exhibit “challenging behaviour” and that they often felt “trapped”.
Mahon said: “How can they justify rejecting parole just because on the day he was supposed to meet the parole board he woke up in a bad mood and told them to leave? That to me is mental health…so why should he be in jail for that?”
Official figures published last week show that 2,796 people who were issued an IPP are still in prison today. Of these, 1,179 have never been released and 705 have already served more than ten years beyond their original sentence.
Campaigners have described IPPs as a ‘death sentence by the back door’. The rate of self-harm among IPP prisoners is more than twice that of the general prison population and there have been 90 cases of self-harm among prisoners on IPPs in custody since they were introduced in April 2005, according to the United Group for Reform or IPP. The figures do not include suicides in the community.
One person still serving an IPP sentence, Wayne Gregory from Swansea, said the sentence had affected “every aspect of my life, my physical and mental health and my progress out of prison”.
Gregory was jailed in 2007 after admitting injuries and assault. He should have spent less than three years in prison, but he is still there.
Campaigners who support him say he is “trapped in a cycle” of severe anxiety and self-harm. In one incident, Wayne wrote that “IPP killed me” on his cell wall in his own blood. In a letter outlining his situation, he said he wanted to be a voice for IPP prisoners and was optimistic that things would change. “I will not be silent,” he said.
The Ministry of Justice has so far resisted calls to review the cases of existing IPP prisoners. It said that 185 IPP prisoners had been released in the period to March 2024 and that this number had fallen by three-quarters since the sentences were scrapped in 2012.
Related: The Guardian’s take on indefinite sentences: the legacy of bad law continues
But a spokesperson said retrospective changes to sentences posed a risk to public safety because it meant people deemed unsafe for release by the parole board, “many of whom have committed serious violent or sexual crimes, would leave prison without supervision and support of their probationary period”. She must respond to the coroner’s report by May 23.
Richard Garside, the director of the Center for Crime and Justice Studies, said there was no reason why post-release supervision and support could not be legislated for people on IPPs. He said it was certainly true that some had committed serious crimes, but this did not mean it was okay “for them to languish in prison for years after the tariff”.
Lord Blunkett, who introduced IPPs when he was home secretary in Tony Blair’s government, has also called for reforms. In 2021, a year before Rider’s suicide, he told the Lords: “I’m wrong. The government now has the opportunity to get it right.”
• In Great Britain and Ireland, you can contact Samaritans on freephone 116 123, or by email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988, chat at 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service is Lifeline 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org