Scottish Deaths in Custody

In 2025, nearly five people died every week in Scotland while in custody. This includes people detained on mental health grounds, in prison and police custody, in migration detention or asylum accommodation, after police contact, and children in the care of the state.

People are dying by suicide, drugs, manageable conditions like diabetes and epilepsy and in some cases from brutal restraints by state actors. Most of these deaths will have no public investigation, as required by Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Even where a fatal accident inquiry (FAI) is held, research shows they rarely identify any problems. Inquiries take many years and, by the time they happen, evidence has been lost, witness memories fade and more people have died.

More people die in detention in Scotland per capita than in England or Europe. Over 400 people died in prison in the past ten years, and over a thousand died while detained for mental health reasons. State actors are complacent and people who die are commonly blamed for their own deaths.

Want to know more? sccjr.ac.uk/project/nothing-to-see-here-project

By law, FAIs cannot find anyone guilty for a death and no finding from an FAI can be used in another legal action. Recommendations to prevent deaths are unmonitored and legally unenforceable. By the time an FAI is completed, other routes of legal action have expired.

Families describe the FAI experience as brutal. State actors have lawyers from the start while families have no right to legal aid until the inquiry process has begun. It takes an average of nearly three years for an inquiry to be completed; a third take five years or more.

“I still find it so hard to believe that if the people responsible had simply done their jobs and followed their own policies and procedures, my son could still be here today. Scott may have had a chance of surviving. This is something I will have to live with for the rest of my life.”

Gillian Allen, mother of Scott who died in HMP Low Moss in 2024