Most of our American readers will be stunned to see this headline and may even assume its a joke or a typo. However, as you’re about to learn, the United Kingdom is a bit more lenient when it comes to repeat offenders than the United States. While states such as Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, New Mexico, and many others have either a Three Strikes Law or a Habitual Offender Law, the UK has no such deterrent. As a consequence, career criminals such as Patrick Ryan can rack up convictions without worrying about serving life in prison.
A Life of Crime
This isn’t to say that Patrick Ryan hasn’t been in prison. In fact, he has spent almost half his life behind bars. The trouble is, he is apparently addicted to breaking the law because every single time he is released from jail, he commits yet another offense. To date, he has over 630 criminal convictions. The police have issued a ‘Do Not Print’ order on his rap sheet to save paper! On one occasion, a judge at Preston Crown Court admitted that it would take some time to read out the lengthy criminal record of Ryan, which stretches to 100 pages.
Ryan’s first conviction came at the tender age of 14, and by the time he was 50 years of age, he had served 23 years in prison. Now aged 61, Ryan has shown no sign of changing his ways, and he continues to commit different types of crimes.
One of his most recent convictions came after he was just released from Barlinnie Prison in Scotland. He had a travel warrant to return to his home in Preston, England but due to floods, the train he was on had to stop at the town of Motherwell, Scotland and all passengers disembarked. Ryan consumed a substantial amount of alcohol during this stop and ended up in the hospital. When he continued his journey, Ryan was dressed in a hospital gown and white paper suit.
In this outfit, he entered a Blackpool café, ate a meal, and then announced he couldn’t pay for it. To cap things off, Ryan urinated against the wall of the café. Remarkably, Ryan wasn’t jailed for this offense and instead received a fine of £110. Approximately 420 of his crimes involved eating a meal and failing to pay for it. As a result, he has received the delightfully British nickname ‘Rogue n’ Nosh,’ although surely ‘The Plague of Preston’ would be more appropriate.
Other offenses include shoplifting, theft, criminal damage, and public drunkenness. On one occasion in 2010, Ryan was unable to appear before magistrates at Blackpool because he was already in prison serving 28 days for theft. To date, Ryan’s antics have cost the taxpayer an estimated £3 million, and a handful of his crimes are of a far more sinister nature.