‘Indefensible’: UK prisoner jailed for 23 months killed himself after being held for 17 years

Scott Rider as a child and adult. He was convicted in 2005, and said days before his death in 2022 that he had lost hope he would ever be freed. Photograph: Courtesy Michelle Mahon/SWNS

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.