Proper care could have saved another life at HMP Lowdham Grange, inquest finds

The life of a prisoner at HMP Lowdham Grange could have been saved had he received adequate care, an Inquest jury decided. Ricky Crosher died at HMP Lowdham Grange in Nottinghamshire on 11 October 2023. The jury found on 28 November that he had suffered from neglect during his stay in the jail. 

During the hearing, Nottingham Coroner’s Court heard that, on the morning of the 40-year-old’s death, a prison officer had seen that Mr Crosher’s cell observation hatch was blocked but carried out other checks before calling for help from a colleague and raising the alarm.

The officer told the inquest his assessment of the situation at the time had been “completely wrong”. Mr Crosher was then found hanging in his cell. The officer said he would act differently if a similar case happened today, and criticised chaotic conditions in the Category B jail at the time of the death, which occurred shortly after management of the jail was transferred from Serco to Sodexo in February 2023. 

The Director of the prison from April to October 2023, Sodexo’s Damian Evans, told the inquest that the prison was suffering from a “vicious circle” of problems at the time, partly due to the changeover of management.

This had been a major issue that arose when a single inquest jury in early 2025 investigated three deaths in the same prison which occurred within weeks of one another in March 2023. The jury in Mr Cosher’s inquest noted that the lessons from those tragedies had not been learned. 

However, Coroner Laurinda Bower, who had overseen those previous cases as well as that of Mr Cosher, said that whilst she would be issuing a Prevention of Further Deaths notice, she was pleased to report that there had been no self-inflicted deaths in the prison since it had been transferred back to the control of HMPPS in 2024.