Coroner condemns ‘inhumane’ imprisonment for public protection sentences that have no end date for release
A senior coroner has condemned the “inhumane” and “indefensible” treatment of a man who killed himself 17 years into an indefinite prison sentence. Tom Osborne, the senior coroner for Milton Keynes, said Scott Rider had given up all hope of release before he took his own life at HMP Woodhill in June 2022.
He had been serving an imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence 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 worker that he had lost hope he would ever be freed. He said it was “disgusting” that he was still locked up, that his crime had not warranted a never-ending punishment, and that the IPP sentence had ruined his life. “He did things wrong and he deserved to be punished but he didn’t deserve that,” his sister, Michelle Mahon, said.
Osborne, who led the investigation into Rider’s death, has now written to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) calling for a review of all prisoners serving IPP sentences.
The controversial punishment was introduced in 2005 and scrapped in 2012 after widespread criticism. But it was not abolished retrospectively and almost 3,000 people given IPPs remain in prison today. The sentences do not have an end date, with prisoners remaining in custody until they can prove they don’t pose a risk.
Many of those on IPPs were convicted for low-level crimes such as theft, including one person who has spent 12 years in prison after stealing a mobile phone. Even if IPP prisoners are released, they remain on licence with the threat of the sentence being reactivated at any time.
In a prevention of future deaths report sent to the prisons minister, Edward Argar, Osborne warned that without urgent action more people could die. He said he had been told by the governor of Woodhill that she believed IPPs were “indefensible” and that she and her fellow governors would welcome an intervention.
“One has to conclude that his treatment was inhumane and indefensible and that if action is not taken to review all prisoners sentenced to IPP then there is a risk of further deaths occurring,” he wrote of Rider’s case.
Rider’s sister said that the sentence robbed her brother “of the chance to have a family and the chance to turn his life around”.
She said that growing up, her brother had been the “golden child” but that in his teens he began using drugs 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 on to clean his life up and find a girlfriend. But in 2005, while still on licence 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, a nurse from Durham from whom he was estranged, only found out he was serving an IPP sentence after he died. She said she had never heard of them before and was stunned that it meant the length of his punishment lay 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 do not condone what Scott has done. In 17 years, he committed 47 offences and was convicted of 22. But I think these sentences are inhumane and they need to be abolished. To get a 23-month sentence and serve 17 years… how can they justify it?” Mahon said.
She said she felt her brother had been punished for disengaging with the system. Over his 17-and-a-half years behind bars, Rider transferred between prisons repeatedly; was abusive to staff; and had appeared depressed. In 2018, he was convicted of racially aggravated harassment of a prison officer.
In May 2022 he told a prison worker that he felt Woodhill prison was “despicable” and that he was “going insane”. He refused to engage with the parole process. By the time of his death in June 2022, he had been self-isolating in his cell for 200 days and had stopped showering. The inquest into Rider’s death heard it was common for IPP prisoners to display “challenging behaviours” and that they often felt “trapped”.
Mahon said: “How can they justify rejecting parole just because on the day he’s supposed to meet the parole board he’s woken up in a bad mood and told them to eff off? That to me cries mental health… so why should he be kept in prison for that?”
Official figures published last week show 2,796 people given IPPs remain in prison today. Of those, 1,179 have never been released and 705 are more than 10 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 self-inflicted deaths of prisoners on IPPs in custody since they were introduced in April 2005, according to the United Group for Reform of IPP. The figures do not include suicides in the community.
One person still serving an IPP sentence, Wayne Gregory from Swansea, said the punishment had affected “every aspect of my life, physical and mental health and progression out of prison”.
Gregory was jailed in 2007 after admitting wounding and common assault and should have been in prison for under three years, but remains there today.
Campaigners supporting 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 detailing his situation, he said he wanted to be a voice for IPP prisoners and was optimistic things would change. “I won’t be silent,” he said.
The MoJ has so far resisted calls to review the cases of existing IPP prisoners. It said 185 IPP prisoners had been released in the year to March 2024 and that numbers had reduced by three-quarters since the sentences were scrapped in 2012.
But a spokesperson said that retrospectively changing sentences posed a risk to public safety because it meant people who the parole board had deemed unsafe for release, “many of whom have committed serious violent or sexual offences, would leave prison without probation supervision and support”. It must respond to the coroner’s report by 23 May.
Richard Garside, the director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said there was no reason why post-release supervision and support could not be written into legislation for people on IPPs. He said it was certainly the case that some had committed serious crimes but this did not mean it was OK “that they are languishing in prison years after the tariff”.
Lord Blunkett, who introduced IPPs while home secretary in Tony Blair’s government, has also called for reform. In 2021, a year before Rider’s suicide, he told the Lords: “I got it wrong. The government now have the chance to get it right.”
