England and Wales

• Introduction and background
• Part 1: Legal frameworks
• Part 2: Policies and procedures
• Part 3: Comparative indicators
• Summary and recommendations
• References and data sources

Introduction

Abstract

Certain features of the English and Welsh system constitute relatively good practice when looked at internationally, but more needs to be done, including on data collection, publication and learning lessons.

For the year in question (April 2019 – April 2020), figures on the deaths of officers and staff on duty and on the number of members of the public injured or killed following use of force were either unavailable or contained important ambiguities and missing information. It was not possible to calculate many indicators due to these issues, however those that could be calculated were comparatively low. The number of civilians killed by on-duty public security agents for every 100,000 inhabitants was 0.0, the number of civilians killed by on-duty public security agents for every 1,000 public security agents was 0.1 and it was not possible to calculate the ratio of the number of civilians killed by gunshot by on-duty public security agents to public security agents killed by gunshot in homicides while on duty, as the latter data is not publicly available¹. Moreover, due to a failure to consistently provide ethnicity data, it was also not possible to calculate ethnic disproportionality from the publicly available statistics. Gender was more consistently noted, making further analysis possible in theory (although, in practice, for the year in question, all of the deceased were men).

Following the publication of an independent review into serious incidents and deaths in custody, undertaken by Dame Elish Angiolini², and Coroner’s reports that have been issued to prevent future deaths, more needs to be done to ensure that lessons are learnt when deaths occur. Rules on police use of force across the United Kingdom generally accord with international law, in particular with respect to use of firearms, but regulations on the use of less lethal weapons by law enforcement organisations need to be further developed.

Background

The police in England and Wales are comprised of 43 territorial services, each with a specific geographical remit, as well as some specialist non-territorial forces (for instance, the British Transport Police, Ministry of Defence Police and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary). The territorial services are sometimes referred to as Home Office forces, due to the nature of their funding arrangements. Each police force is a distinct entity, with Chief Constables described as having operational independence over matters relating to their service. A number of other agencies are also involved in policing in England and Wales. These include the College of Policing, which describes itself as the professional body for the police in England and Wales, the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), which co-ordinates national police responses and approaches across the different police forces, and the Home Office, the government department responsible for interior affairs, which describes itself as supporting visible, responsible and accountable policing³. Oversight mechanisms include elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs)⁴, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of the Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Service (HMICFRS)⁵, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), and Coroners Courts. In order to aide comparability with other country case studies, and to avoid complications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, this report analyses data from April 2019 – April 2020, but also speaks to more general trends where appropriate.

Part 1: Legal Frameworks

Global treaties

1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)		State party
ICCPR Optional Protocol 1		Not party
1984 Convention Against Torture (CAT)		State party
CAT committee competent to receive individual complaints?		No
CAT Optional Protocol 1		State party

Regional treaties

1950 European Convention on Human Rights

State party

National legal provisions

Relevant constitutional provisions or general laws

Information from this section is taken largely from PolicingLaw.info (accessed 21 August 2023), with some additions and some updating.

The UK does not have a written constitution. The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporates the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, including Article 2 on the Right to Life, and related case law into UK law.

Rules on police use of force are spread across statute and the common law. The statutory provisions include, but are not limited to, the 1967 Criminal Law Act, which states that: &ldquoA person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime, or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders or of persons unlawfully at large”. The requirement for force to be reasonable in the circumstances is also the position at common law with respect to self-defence or the defence of others, including by police officers and other law enforcement officials.

Within this general framework, the notion of what is ‘reasonable’ force is determined on the basis of necessity and proportionality. How these concepts are to be assessed is clarified by Section 76 of the 2008 Criminal Justice and Immigration Act:

The question whether the degree of force used by D [the person charged with the offence] was reasonable in the circumstances is to be decided by reference to the circumstances as D believed them to be…

If D claims to have held a particular belief as regards the existence of any circumstances:

the reasonableness or otherwise of that belief is relevant to the question whether D genuinely held it; but if it is determined that D did genuinely hold it [i.e. a belief that force was reasonable], D is entitled to rely on it … whether or not—

(i) it was mistaken, or

(ii) (if it was mistaken) the mistake was a reasonable one to have made.

It has been argued that there is thus both a subjective and an objective element to this defence under criminal law. The question of whether the degree of force used by a person was reasonable in the circumstances is to be decided by reference to the circumstances that that person genuinely and honestly believed to exist. This is so even if their belief is mistaken. Whether the degree of force used in the circumstances as the person believed them to be was actually reasonable on the basis of that belief will, however, be assessed objectively by the courts. In other words, a jury will be required to determine whether a use of force was reasonable from the accused’s perspective. It is though possible for a jury to determine that the accused’s belief about the circumstances was so unreasonable that the accused could not honestly and genuinely have held it.

R (on the application of Officer W80) v Director General of the Independent Office for Police Conduct and others addressed differences between the criminal and civil law tests, and associated ambiguities in the context of a possible misconduct hearing (i.e., a disciplinary proceeding) for an officer —known as Officer W80— in relation to a police shooting of Mr Jermaine Baker in December 2015. Mr Baker was shot during a foiled attempt to enable a prisoner to escape in the context of a sentencing hearing. In 2023, the Supreme Court found that: ‘the test to be applied in disciplinary proceedings in relation to the use of force by a police officer in self-defence is the civil law test… (which looks to whether an honest but mistaken belief is reasonable) as opposed to the criminal law test of self-defence (which looks to whether the belief is honestly held)’⁶.

Relevant national regulations

The College of Policing publishes Authorised Professional Practice (APP) guidance on a range of topics, including:

• Armed policing, which includes sections on general principles on the ‘use of force, firearms and less lethal weapons’, as well as specific sections including ‘discharge of firearms’, ‘Conducted energy devices (Taser)’ and ‘attenuating energy projectiles’. Available at https://www.college.police.uk/app/armed-policing (dated 2023).
• Detention and Custody, which includes sections on the principles of using force in custody and on control and restraint. https://www.college.police.uk/app/detention-and-custody/control-restraint-and-searches (dated 2023).

Hence, while some weapon types are covered in a broader APP (such as armed policing), not every type of force or less lethal weapon appears to have its own publicly available APP that can be readily accessed via the College of Policing’s website, although the College states that “new authorised professional practice (APP) on public and personal safety training is being published soon to provide further support”⁷.

APP sits alongside Schedule 2 to the Police (Conduct) Regulations of 2012 and 2020 which provides that police officers shall only use force to the extent that it is necessary, proportionate and reasonable in all the circumstances; wording also used in the College of Policing Code of Ethics⁸.

Legal interpretation and application

UN or other international body decisions or advisory opinions

In 2023, the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, on its visit to the UK, found: “serious concerns about the unwarranted use of force against people of African descent, including in police-involved killings of people of African descent and deaths in custody. The Working Group met with the families of Chris Kaba, Oladeji Omishore, and Sean Rigg, among others, and followed the cases of Sheku Bayoh and Kevin Clarke. and learned about persistent structural barriers to the access to justice over the course of many years, including untenable delays in investigations, dismissive and callous treatment of families, misinformation, and the necessity for significant financial outlay by victims’ families to compel meaningful investigation. Notably, although much time has passed between these specific deaths, the same frustrations, obstacles, and intransigence persists according to accounts”⁹.

In its 2021 report, the UN Subcommittee for the Prevention of Torture expressed its concern about “the numerous reports received that… persons from ethnic minorities are more likely to be subject to restraint and other restrictive practices and to experience disproportionate numbers of deaths in custody and/or in mental health care”¹⁰.

As noted by the website PolicingLaw.info¹¹, in its 2019 Concluding Observations on the United Kingdom, the Committee against Torture considered that the UK authorities: “should ensure that the use of electrical discharge weapons is strictly compliant with the principles of necessity, subsidiarity, proportionality, advance warning (where feasible) and precaution. The State party should provide clear presumptions against the use of tasers on vulnerable groups, such as children and young people, investigate the causes for their disproportionate use against members of minorities and prohibit their use in drive stun mode. The Committee was of the view that electric discharge weapons “should not form part of the equipment of custodial staff in prisons or any other place of deprivation of liberty, including mental health settings”.

With respect to the use of conducted electrical weapons (e.g. Taser©), in its 2013 Concluding Observations on the United Kingdom’s fifth periodic report on its implementation of the CAT, the Committee against Torture expressed deep concern: ‘at instances where electrical discharge weapons have been used on children, persons with disabilities and in recent policing operations where the serious threat of violence was questioned’. It called on the United Kingdom to ensure: ‘that electrical discharge weapons are used exclusively in extreme and limited situations – where there is a real and immediate threat to life or risk of serious injury – as a substitute for lethal weapons and by trained law enforcement personnel only. The State party should revise the regulations governing the use of such weapons with a view to establishing a high threshold for their use and expressly prohibiting their use on children and pregnant women’. The committee was of the view: ‘that the use of electrical discharge weapons should be subject to the principles of necessity and proportionality and should be inadmissible in the equipment of custodial staff in prisons or any other place of deprivation of liberty’. It urged the United Kingdom ‘to provide detailed instructions and adequate training to law enforcement personnel entitled to use electric discharge weapons, and to strictly monitor and supervise their use’.

Regional court judgments

As noted by the website PolicingLaw.Info¹², number of cases concerning alleged unlawful use of force in law enforcement by the UK police and security forces have come before the European Court of Human Rights. The most important are the Grand Chamber rulings in the McCann and da Silva cases.

MCCANN AND OTHERS v. UNITED KINGDOM (1995)

This judgment is one of the most important the European Court has ever made. It was the first ruling under Article 2 (the right to life) of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights in which the Court established that that right includes four dimensions: compatibility of national law with Article 2; the use of force itself; a “duty of precaution” or planning and control requirement; and a duty to investigate. In its judgment, the European Court found a violation of the right to life by the United Kingdom, not for the decision by British soldiers to shoot and kill three members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who were on a bombing mission in Gibraltar, but for the failure to arrest them beforehand.

ARMANI DA SILVA v. UNITED KINGDOM (2016)

The da Silva case concerned the fatal police shooting of a Brazilian electrician, Jean-Charles de Menezes, in the London Underground in 2005 when he was mistaken for a wanted terrorist. The European Court found no breaches of the four dimensions of Article 2 and reaffirmed that an honest but mistaken belief on the part of the police did not amount to a violation of the right to life.

There has been one other European Court of Human Rights judgment on a police shooting in England:

BUBBINS v. UNITED KINGDOM (2005)

The deceased in this case had pointed a replica firearm from the window of his flat and was shot dead by a member of Bedfordshire Police. A Chamber of the Court held that there was no breach of any aspect of Article 2 and confirmed that a use of force based on an officer’s honest belief about the circumstances could be compatible with the provisions of Article 2(2).

There have been numerous rulings by the Court’s Chambers regarding failings in the duty to investigate under Article 2 involving the activities of UK law enforcement officials and security services in Northern Ireland (including notably Hugh Jordan v UK (2001), the combined rulings in McKerr v. UK, Kelly v UK and Shanaghan v UK (2001), McCaughey & Others v UK (2013) and Hemsworth v UK (2013)).

National court judgments

In 2023, in the so-called W80 case R (on the application of Officer W80) v Director General of the Independent Office for Police Conduct and others), the Supreme Court found that: ‘the test to be applied in disciplinary proceedings in relation to the use of force by a police officer in self-defence is the civil law test… (which looks to whether an honest but mistaken belief is reasonable) as opposed to the criminal law test of self-defence (which looks to whether the belief is honestly held)’¹³.

In 2021, in R v Benjamin Monk¹⁴, concerning the death of Dalian Atkinson, the court found one of the officers involved guilty of manslaughter. While this case was not, perhaps, as concerned with substantive or procedural issues as other cases, it is nevertheless noteworthy as it is believed to be the first time since 1986 that a police officer has been successfully prosecuted for manslaughter¹⁵. A second officer was acquitted of charges of assault following a retrial.

Additionally, many cases, investigations, and reports have sought to address unlawful police use of force in the United Kingdom. The following are a number of key examples (as taken / reproduced from the website PolicingLaw.Info). In 1999, a judge-led inquiry into the Metropolitan Police Force’s investigation of the death of a Black youth, Stephen Lawrence, concluded that the Met was guilty of “institutional racism”. Fifteen years later, in 2014, Janet Hills, the chair of the Met’s association for black police officers, called on the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, to admit that the force was still institutionally racist¹⁶.

In 2011, the Independent Police Complaints Commission concluded that a police officer had used “excessive force” in dragging a protester in a wheelchair across a road and that the Metropolitan Police Service was wrong not to recommend criminal charges against him¹⁷. The IPCC criticised the internal inquiry into the incident and called on the Met to apologise to the disabled student, Mr. Jody McIntyre. Criminal charges could not be brought against the officer as a six-month legal deadline had already expired. The IPCC recommended that the officer become subject to ‘management action’.

In 2012, the IPCC urged the Metropolitan Police to reduce the use of excessive force following complaints against specialist riot officers¹⁸.

In 2015, it was reported that 3,000 police officers were under investigation for alleged assault in England and Wales.

In 2016, a police officer and a police community support officer were convicted of misconduct in a public office and sent to prison for their failure to protect a disabled Iranian refugee, Bijan Ebrahimi¹⁹. The 44-year-old was punched and kicked to death outside his Bristol home and his body set on fire by neighbour Lee James, who wrongly suspected he was a paedophile. In 2017, the IPCC suggested that Avon and Somerset police officers may have been biased against Bijan Ebrahimi because of his race²⁰.

In 2020, an inquest was held into the death of Marc Cole²¹. On 23 May 2017, Mr Cole, who had been acting in a paranoid and psychotic manner, ingested a substantial amount of cocaine before jumping from a first floor window of a friend’s home. He was in possession of a large knife with which he stabbed a woman in her garden before walking in the roadway and slashing with the knife at his own throat and neck. The police arrived and, following a confrontation with Mr Cole, Tasered him on three occasions. He suffered a cardiac arrest at the scene and was rushed by ambulance to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead by medical staff. The jury, in dealing with the cause of death found specifically “excessive (amount) of cocaine taken resulting in paranoid and erratic behaviour with the use of Taser having more than a trivial impact on Mr Cole’s cardiac arrest”. The Coroner held that:

Two forensic pathologists gave evidence and confirmed their joint opinion that the Taser caused (together with other things) Mr Cole’s death in that it played a more than minimal, trivial or negligible part. Although I found as a fact that the training given to the police officers was appropriate I did so ONLY upon the basis that it was given based upon the limited knowledge presently available. I am concerned, based upon the evidence that was led before the jury, that there is insufficient independent data as to the lethality of Taser use and that, therefore the advice and training provided to police officers may be deficient or incomplete.

The Coroner suggested “a wholesale review of the effects of multiple Taser activations and the effects of sustained activations (whether in isolation or in combination) so that fuller and more comprehensive advice, guidance and training can be given to those officers who are authorised to carry Taser”.

Oversight bodies

In England and Wales, oversight bodies in cases involving death following police use of force include:

1. Coroner’s Courts: Coroners investigate certain deaths that are unnatural, violent, or where the cause is unknown²². This includes, but is not limited to, deaths following police use of force. Indeed Section 7 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 ‘places a requirement upon the Coroner to summon a jury to hear an inquest case (when)… the death occurred in prison or similar place of detention; the death occurred whilst the deceased was in police custody, or resulted from an injury caused by a police officer(s) in the purported execution of his/her duty’²³. In exceptionally high-profile cases or for other legal reasons a judge may be appointed to hold an inquest into a death²⁴.
2. The Independent Office for Police Conduct (the IOPC) The 2017 Policing and Crime Act established the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) (the successor to the Independent Police Complaints Commission). The IOPC declares that it: ‘oversees the police complaints system in England and Wales. We investigate the most serious matters, including deaths following police contact and set the standards by which the police should handle complaints. We are independent, which means that our decisions are made entirely independently of the police and government’²⁵.

Part 2: Policies and Procedures

Data collection and publication by official agencies

1. Are the number of deaths following any police use of force
	Collected?	Good, Robust
	Accessible through existing publicly available information?	Good, Robust
	Is this a legal requirement?	No Provisions
	Can such information be requested from the authorities when not publicly available?	Good, Robust
	If one can request it, what is the likelihood this information would be released?	Not applicable
	Reason(s) why unknown or not applicable	Already in the public domain
2. If published, to what extent can the number of deaths be readily determined from official statistics?		Partial, Medium
3. Is it possible to identify specific individuals killed in official records?		Partial, Medium
4. Is demographic and other information for the deceased
	Collected?	Good, Robust
	Accessible through existing publicly available information?	Good, Robust
	Is this a legal requirement?	No Provisions
	Can such information be requested from the authorities when not publicly available?	Good, Robust
	If one can request it, what is the likelihood this information would be released?	Not applicable
	Reason(s) why unknown or not applicable	Already in the public domain
5. Is demographic and other information on officers in use of force incidents
	Collected?	Good, Robust
	Accessible through existing publicly available information?	No Provisions
	Is this a legal requirement?	No Provisions
	Can such information be requested from the authorities when not publicly available?	Good, Robust
	If one can request it, what is the likelihood this information would be released?	Unknown
	Reason(s) why unknown or not applicable	FOI requests may be refused on certain grounds, including confidentiality
6. Is information on the circumstances
	Collected?	Good, Robust
	Publicly available?	Good, Robust
	Is this a legal requirement?	No Provisions
	Can such information be requested from the authorities when not publicly available?	Good, Robust
	If one can request it, what is the likelihood this information would be released?	Not applicable
	Reason(s) why unknown or not applicable	Already in the public domain
7. Is information about the type(s) of force used
	Collected?	Good, Robust
	Accessible through existing publicly available information?	Good, Robust
	Is this a legal requirement?	No Provisions
	Can such information be requested from the authorities when not publicly available?	Good, Robust
	If one can request it, what is the likelihood this information would be released?	Not applicable
	Reason(s) why unknown or not applicable	Already in the public domain

Data quality of official sources

8. How reliable are the sources used to produce official statistics about deaths?		Partial, Medium
9. Are there mechanisms for internal quality assurance / verification conducted		Good, Robust
10. Is the methodology for data collection publicised?		Good, Robust
11. How reliable are the overall figures produced?		Partial, Medium

Data analysis and lessons learnt

12. Do state or police agencies analyse data on the use of lethal force, to prevent future deaths?		Partial, Medium
13. Is there evidence that state/ police agencies act on the results of their analysis, including applying lessons learnt?		Limited, Poor
14. Are external bodies are able to reuse data for their own analyses?		Partial, Medium
15. Do external, non-governmental agencies collect and publish their own statistics on deaths following police use of force?		Good, Robust

Investigations by official agencies

16. Is there a legal requirement for deaths to be independently investigated?		Good, Robust
17. If so, which organisation(s) conduct these investigations?		The IOPC and the Coroner’s Court.
18. In the year in question, how many deaths following police use of force have been investigated by the organisation(s) specified in question 17?		‘Likely’ 17 (100%), possibly 15 (88%)
19. Are close relatives of the victims involved in the investigations?		Partial, Medium
20. Investigation reports into deaths
	Are publicly available?	Partial, Medium
	Give reasons for the conclusions they have reached?	Partial, Medium
	Is this a legal requirement?	No Provisions
	Can such information be requested from the authorities when not publicly available?	Good, Robust
	If one can request it, what is the likelihood this information would be released?	Good, Robust
	Possible grounds for refusal?	FOI requests may be refused on certain grounds, including confidentiality.
21. Is there information available on legal proceedings against agents / officials, pursuant to deaths?		Limited, Poor
22. Is there information available on legal proceedings against state agencies, pursuant to deaths?		Limited, Poor
23. Is there information available on disciplinary proceedings against agents/ officials, pursuant to deaths?		Partial, Medium
24. Number of prosecutions against agents / officials involved in the last ten years?		Exact number not publicly available.
25. Number of convictions against agents / officials involved in the last ten years?		1 conviction for manslaughter.
26. Number of prosecutions against agencies involved in the last ten years?		Exact number not publicly available.
27. Number of convictions against agencies involved in the last ten years?		Exact number not publicly available but at least 1 under the Health and Safety at Work Act, 1974.
28. Number of cases in which states have been found to have breached human rights law on the use of lethal force?		1 ECtHR Supreme Chamber case (McCann, concerning actions in Gibraltar).

Detailed elaboration

Data collection and publication by official agencies

Although it is not a legal requirement for them to do so, in 2019–2020 two official agencies published aggregate statistics on police use of force in England and Wales; the IOPC and the Home Office. The IOPC collects data on deaths directly from the police, who are required by law to refer certain matters to them, including cases where “someone had direct or indirect contact with the police when, or shortly before, they… died. However, forces only need to refer cases where the contact may have caused or contributed to the death or injury”²⁶. An annual publication is then produced using this data and IOPC internal data sources²⁷.

Titled Deaths During or Following Police Contact, this IOPC publication classifies deaths into 5 categories: road traffic fatalities, fatal shootings, deaths in or following police custody, apparent suicides following police custody and other deaths following police contact that were subject to an independent investigation. Deaths following police use of force could fall under multiple headings, and there is no specific, distinct category for such deaths. Due to this, and the issues we detail in the next section (data quality), it can be difficult to ascertain a clear number of deaths following police use of force, and any number given should be treated with caution. It should also be noted that the IOPC states that deaths from the use of force by off-duty officers are not included in its data (although, as we will see elsewhere, there appears to be at least one exception to this included in the report for the year in question). Bearing in mind these caveats, however, during the 2019 – 2020 reporting period it appears that, according to the IOPC statistics, at least 17 deaths occurred following the use of force by police officers²⁸.

In its annual publication, the IOPC presents information on deaths in an anonymised, narrative format. However, the amount of information given varies according to how the death has been classified. This means that, while it may be provided to the IOPC, demographic information for the people who died and the officers involved, the circumstances of the incident and the types of force used are not consistently available for all deaths detailed in the report. In addition to the narrative information detailed in the report, demographic information such as age, gender and ethnicity are reported for each type of death in tables listed in an Appendix. However, as deaths are categorised into the five sections listed above, it is not possible to identify from the tables those deaths which occurred after force was used.

More specifically, while the report consistently mentions the gender of those who died, it does not consistently provide their ethnicity. While the ethnicity of the deceased is stated in the detailed qualitative description of cases that fall under ‘fatal shootings’ (with two men described as ‘Asian’ and the third described as ‘Black’), it is not consistently listed in the description of cases that are categorised under ‘deaths in or following police custody’ or ‘other deaths’. While the IOPC provides a breakdown by ethnic group of those who died following the use of force for each of these two categories, because it conflates cases where the police have used force with cases where members of the public (but not the police) have used force, the precise ethnic breakdown of cases following police use of force remains unclear.

For example, on p.15, when detailing deaths in or following police custody, the report notes “eight of the 18 people who died had some force used against them either by officers or members of the public before their deaths… All eight people were physically restrained by the police or non-police, such as members of the public. One was restrained only by non-police. Of the people who were physically restrained, six were White and two were Black”. On page 27, when detailing ‘other’ deaths, the report notes that “a total of nine people who died following police contact had force used against them… Seven people were White, one was Black and the ethnicity of one person was not known at the time of publishing. Seven people were known to have been restrained by police officers. Of these, one man also had leg restraints used on him. Two people were restrained by members of the public only”. As is evident from the above, it is not possible to ascertain from these descriptions the ethnicity of those that had police force used against them (as opposed to those who experienced force ‘only’ by members of the public) and nor is it possible to work this out from the more detailed description of the individual cases, as these often do not detail the ethnicity of those involved.

Home Office data collection and publication

Since 2017, police officers, staff and volunteers have been required to fill out a standardised form whenever they use any form of force. Under these new reporting requirements, a form is to be completed when an officer uses force on any one person. If the same officer uses force on multiple people, they have to fill out a separate use of force form for each person. If multiple officers use force on the same person, each officer has to fill out a form documenting their own use of force. The form includes information about the person on whom force is used (including officer perceived gender, ethnicity and age) as well as demographic information about the officer who used force, the circumstances and the type of force used. The Home Office publishes an annual report based on this data, and which has previously included the information collected on fatalities following use of force²⁹. Police forces are also expected to publish quarterly data on their websites³⁰, although this does not always happen in practice. The Home Office statistics for 2019–2020 state that:

Under the Police Reform Act 2002, forces in England and Wales have a statutory duty to refer a death during or following police contact to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). This is done when there is an allegation or indication that police contact, directly or indirectly, contributed to the death. Therefore, any deaths that occurred during or following police use of force in the year ending March 2020 should form a subset of the deaths in the IOPC National Statistics report which covers deaths during or following police contact in the same period. There were 2 reports of a death of an individual resulting from an injury relating to police use of force in the year ending March 2020³¹.

Later versions of Home Office statistics (e.g. for 2021–2022) do not give figures for the number of deaths from use of force statistics and simply refer readers to the IOPC statistics. For these reasons, the focus in this country report is predominantly on IOPC official data.

Data quality of official sources

The IOPC’s methodology, reporting practices, definitions and limitations are set out in a detailed guidance document which accompanies the publication³² and the IOPC engage in internal quality assurance and verification measures. According to the guidance document, these include checking that all deaths reported are captured and that there is no duplication; classifying deaths into the different categories using various sources; and validating details with the IOPC investigator and police forces. The figures produced are designated as national statistics and comply with the requirements set out by the Office for National Statistics.

That said, there are some ambiguities and limitations in the data. As noted elsewhere, there is no specific, distinct category for deaths following police use of force; instead these are spread across different categories, including fatal shootings, deaths in or following police custody and ‘other’ deaths. Although the IOPC publication provides a qualitative description of many of the incidents covered in the report, and provides an indication of how many cases in each category involved the use of force, the wording of this is often vague (perhaps not least because all the details may not be known at the time of publication). Indeed, it is not always clear whether force was used by the police, by members of the public, or both; a key distinction.

This is further complicated by the IOPC’s lack of clarity about the meanings of uses of force. While the report does not provide a definition of use of force, it does provide a definition of police restraint (which is sometimes used interchangeably with use of force). Police restraint is defined as referring to ‘a range of actions, including physical holds and pressure compliance. It does not include the routine use of handcuffs, unless another form of restraint was also used’³³. As such, it is possible that, had the IOPC used a more expansive definition of force (e.g., counting the use of handcuffs as a force option in its own right), this could result in a larger number of cases where death followed the use of force by the police³⁴.

There are also some data quality issues pertaining to those deaths categorised as ‘other’. This category encompasses deaths following contact with the police that did not involve arrest or detention under the Mental Health Act 1983. This could include, for example, deaths where the police ‘help medical staff to restrain individuals who are not under arrest’³⁵. Such deaths are only included in the annual publication if they are subject to an independent investigation. As the IOPC note, the criteria for deciding whether an independent investigation should be conducted ‘may vary over time… (and the) increase in our capacity to carry out independent investigations… has had a direct impact on the number of deaths reported on in this category. Therefore, trend analysis of deaths recorded in this category would not be meaningful’³⁶. As such it is possible, in theory, that some cases involving the use of force in circumstances where the person is not arrested or taken into detention under the Mental Health Act may not be included in the report. However, the IOPC contended to us that, in practice, if police use of force may have been relevant to a death, it is highly likely that they would independently investigate³⁷.

Home Office statistics

The Home Office’s methodology, reporting practices, definitions and limitations are set out in a detailed guidance document, or user guide. As noted in the previous section, the data comes from the police and quality assurance takes place between the Home Office and individual police services, with statisticians implementing a range of quality assurance checks. This includes querying missing or incomplete data and ensuring the data provided is as complete as possible³⁸.

While, at the time of writing, the Home Office no longer reports fatalities, and refers readers to the IOPC statistics, previous concerns about its fatality data have been noted, including in the user guide to these statistics, and in a previous Lethal Monitor report³⁹. The user guide notes that the report only covers the 43 territorial forces in England and Wales and does not include other, specialist forces. Moreover, officers are encouraged to submit a use of force report as soon as possible after the incident. Therefore, any subject fatalities which occur after the incident may not be recorded. Further, it is possible that a form may not be completed in incidents where someone has died. The Home Office notes that “although all police forces do keep records of all fatalities, a fatality caused by an officer’s use of force may not have been recorded specifically on the police forces’ use of force recording system”. Further, “where a fatality occurred and a use of force report was submitted, the officer involved may not have completed the report themselves… As such, these incidents often had little other information, as these reports were likely submitted by a third-party who was not present at the incident and could not provide more than the key information”⁴⁰. Relatedly, the Home Office also notes that “the data on injuries and fatalities is not reported consistently. For example, officers may report ‘no injury’ sustained due to their use of force, but then also include details of a ‘minor’ injury. This could be because officers recorded injuries… when these did not occur as a result of the use of force incident. The same may be true for the reporting of hospitalisations and fatalities”⁴¹.

Data analysis and lessons learned

Generating analysis and recommendations

The IOPC annual deaths report contains no recommendations for preventing future deaths although the IOPC note that, as it is intended as a purely statistical report, it is not the appropriate mechanism to do so. Instead, the IOPC note that recommendations can be found in a variety of other places, including in other publications, Learning the Lessons, bulletins and in investigation summaries⁴², and that they publish formal recommendations issued under paragraph 28A of the Police Reform Act 2002. Details of IOPC investigations and recommendations can also be found on the IOPC website. While these investigations can be searched by a number of variables, including the police force or agency involved and the topic (with ‘death and serious injury’ and ‘use of force and armed policing’ listed as categories), these filters cannot be applied simultaneously. As the website includes details of investigations that did not result in recommendations, it can be difficult to find those cases that did result in recommendations for change. As a consequence, recommendations that have been made following a death pursuant to a use of force are not always immediately apparent.

Learning lessons and implementing recommendations

A Ministerial Council on Deaths in Custody was established in 2008⁴³ which includes, but is not limited to, deaths in police custody. It is advised by the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody (IAPDC) and has a remit to “bring about a continuing and sustained reduction in the number and rate of deaths in all forms of state custody in England and Wales”⁴⁴. This is an ongoing challenge. In 2015 the then Home Secretary, the Rt. Hon Theresa May MP, announced an independent review of deaths and serious incidents in police custody (the Report of the Independent Review of Deaths and Serious Incidents in Police Custody, also referred to as the Report of the Angiolini Review). The establishment of the IAPDC and Ministerial Council and the creation of an independent review are important steps towards ensuring that lessons are learnt and the risk of future deaths are minimised although, with their focus on police custody, they are less well equipped to deal with deaths outside of the custody setting.

It is also notable that the Angiolini Report, published in 2017, found that there was a “failure to learn lessons and to properly consider and implement recommendations and advice from… interested organisations and from previous reports and studies”⁴⁵. Since the Angiolini Report was published, there are further indications that this remains an area of concern. In 2018 the government assessed its own progress against the Angiolini Report. It found that “we have made good progress although there remains more to do”⁴⁶. A later assessment by the government, in 2021, found that “65 of the 110 recommendations made by the Review have been delivered and a further 20 recommendations delivered in part. 12 recommendations were rejected completely with several more recommendations rejected in part”⁴⁷. Dame Angiolini has been quoted expressing her concern “that many very significant recommendations (from the Review) have not been progressed”⁴⁸.

Similarly, in 2022, the IADCP “highlight(ed) the range of steps taken by forces to protect lives, which were submitted as examples of good local practice, for the benefit of all PCCs, forces and other policing organisations”, while “recognis(ing) the range of existing expert reports and resources which set out recommendations and good practice to prevent deaths… (and) reiterat(ing) their importance and the ongoing need to review and enact their recommendations”, as well as making recommendations of its own⁴⁹.

Also in 2022, the Home Affairs Select Committee expressed its concern⁵⁰ that:

IOPC learning recommendations made to police forces across England and Wales to improve policies and practice in the handling of police complaints are not monitored for follow-up action. We have heard of a lack of clarity about how recommendations are monitored, and whether forces implement them… We recommend that the Government monitor and review bi-annually how effectively local policing bodies are holding their chief constables accountable for implementing IOPC recommendations to their forces, and report the outcomes to us… (and) urge the Government to review how IOPC, HMICFRS (His Majesty’s Inspectorate of the Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Service), and Coroners’ learning recommendations are reported to the public in a more joined-up and meaningful way. We recommend that data be published centrally, in order to simplify and streamline access to this important information.

Investigations by official agencies

As noted in Section 1, two main institutions conduct investigations into deaths following police use of force. The first is the Coroner, who as discussed elsewhere, is required to summon a jury to hear an inquest case when the death resulted from an injury caused by a police officer(s) in the purported execution of his/her duty’⁵¹ and, in exceptional cases, may appoint a judge to hold an inquest, instead of a jury. The inquest record / jury verdict is not automatically made public but can be requested from the Coroner’s Court⁵². Coroners also have a duty to issue Prevention of Future Death reports when they believe that action should be taken by a person, organisation, local authority or government department or agency to prevent future deaths, and these reports, and the responses to them, will be published (unless exceptional circumstances apply) ⁵³.

The second is the Independent Office for Police Conduct (the IOPC), established by the 2017 Policing and Crime Act. The IOPC declares that it: “oversees the police complaints system in England and Wales. We investigate the most serious matters, including deaths following police contact and set the standards by which the police should handle complaints. We use learning from our work to influence changes in policing. We are independent, and make our decisions entirely independently of the police and government”. Deaths and serious injuries must be immediately recorded by police forces and referred to the IOPC, who decides whether and how they should be investigated⁵⁴.

The IOPC can determine whether there are questions of (gross) misconduct and / or criminal conduct to answer but does not determine or control the answer to these questions. The IOPC can pass a case to the Crown Prosecution Service and can direct that forces must hold a misconduct hearing and can present a case at these hearings⁵⁵ — but the outcome of such processes is independent of the IOPC. In cases where performance issues fall below the threshold for misconduct, the IOPC can recommend action.

The IOPC states that “For most of the cases we investigate, we publish anonymised summaries of our reports. These set out a summary of the circumstances that prompted the investigation, the evidence gathered and our conclusions. They also explain any outcomes for those involved — for instance, what happened if there was a misconduct hearing. We publish full investigation reports for the most serious and high-profile incidents. Reports will sometimes be redacted to remove sensitive or private information. We remove investigation reports from our website six months after completing an investigation. Summaries remain on our site for five years. This ensures that we are complying with data protection legislation and with our publication policy. If you cannot find the investigation you are looking for, it may be available on our National Archive website”⁵⁶. More broadly, the IOPC can also make organisational learning recommendations and produce recommendations both for individual forces and nationally (as discussed elsewhere), which are publicly available on their website.

Given this dual system of Coronial inquests and the IOPC, one would expect that all 17 deaths would have been investigated at the time of writing. Yet it is more difficult than it might first appear to definitively answer this question from publicly available information. Indeed, as the Home Affairs Select Committee quoted elsewhere —and previous reports⁵⁷— have noted, the lack of a unified dataset tracking all deaths and investigations, and centralised publication, means that compiling such information is difficult. This is compounded for multiple reasons. With regards to Coroner’s Courts, there is often a significant delay between deaths occurring and the case being heard. Additionally, “Where criminal proceedings are being considered in relation to a death in custody (under murder or manslaughter), the coroner will open an inquest and then adjourn it until the outcome of the proceedings is known”⁵⁸. Hence it is not always clear whether these cases have been investigated in Coroners courts, or whether the process is still ongoing⁵⁹. Moreover, as the names of the deceased are not mentioned in the IOPC reports, this complicates efforts to track whether, and when, the inquest has occurred — as well as to locate the relevant IOPC investigation report into the death.

With regards to IOPC investigations, as noted in a previous report⁶⁰, the IOPC does not specifically state in its publication that it has carried out what it classifies as an ‘independent investigation’ for all deaths that have occurred following police use of force⁶¹. This is significant as there are multiple types of IOPC investigations, which include ‘independent’, ‘managed’, ‘supervised’ and ‘local’ investigations, as well as the case being referred back to the force for them to handle as they consider appropriate. The report indicates that all three fatal shootings and all deaths included in the report in the ‘other’ deaths section (including 7 cases where police used force) were subject to an ‘independent’ investigation by the IOPC. All but two of the 16 cases in the ‘deaths in or following police custody’ section (which includes cases where force was used, as well as a variety of cases where force was not used) were subject to an ‘independent investigation’⁶². There is no further breakdown of this category into cases where force was, and wasn’t, used and so it is not clear whether two cases not subject to an ‘independent’ investigation involved police use of force. However, as noted above, the IOPC contended to us that, in practice, if police use of force may have been relevant to a death, it is highly likely that they would independently investigate. Therefore, we can say that all 17 cases are required to be subject to inquest proceedings —although it is not clear whether those inquests have already concluded— and it is ‘highly likely’ that all 17 cases have been subject to what the IOPC classes as an ‘independent’ investigation, with this being definitively stated for 15 of these cases in the IOPC report.

Involvement of close relatives

A further question pertains to the involvement of, and engagement with, close relatives in IOPC investigations. A Listening Day held by INQUEST involved nine families, represented by 18 attendees, who were invited to discuss their experiences of the death of a relative following contact with the police. INQUEST found that “few in the room… had positive accounts of investigations”, with families raising concerns including evidence gathering, inconsistent approaches to interviewing officers, delays and a failure to involve families during the investigation⁶³. The Home Affairs Select Committee enquiry noted⁶⁴ that:

We have heard from a significant number of people whose dealings with police forces, the IOPC or its predecessor have left them unsatisfied with the investigation of their complaints or the level of sanction applied to officers found to have misconducted themselves. This includes cases of people whose family members or friends have died as a result of police operations, and who are aggrieved at the outcome of subsequent investigations that they feel do not match the severity of what happened to them… We recognise that it is in the nature of any complaints system that those whose complaints are not upheld are unlikely to be entirely satisfied.

The IOPC state that, since this Listening Day, they have made various improvements, including holding their own listening days with bereaved families, appointing Family Liaison Officers and expanding and strengthening the Stakeholder Engagement Team⁶⁵.

It should also be noted that, following legislative changes introduced in 2020, the IOPC can reinvestigate a matter where there are compelling reasons to do so. Since then, following representation from family members and inquest proceedings, it has reopened a number of investigations where people have died following police use of force including in the cases of Darren Cumberbatch, who died in 2017⁶⁶, and the death of Kevin Clarke, who died in 2018⁶⁷. It is notable that this has happened in several cases where death has occurred following police use of force, suggesting issues with the previous investigations conducted.

At the time of writing, the family of Oladeji Omishore (also known as Deji), who died in 2022 following police use of force, are awaiting the High Court listing of an oral hearing on their application for permission to proceed with a judicial review in order to challenge “the IOPC decision not to hold a criminal or misconduct investigation into Oladeji’s death. The family argue that it is unlawful and irrational for the IOPC to have ruled out, at the very least, disciplinary proceedings against the officers. They point, in particular, to the officers’ decisions to repeatedly treat Deji as aggressive, despite the obvious signs of a mental health crisis”⁶⁸.

Legal proceedings, prosecutions and convictions

Since 2017, the 43 Home Office services must provide the College of Policing with details of officers, staff and others who have been dismissed, including following gross misconduct hearings. The College of Policing publishes overall figures, and a publicly searchable database, based on these reports. This reveals that, from April 2019 to March 2020, 6 officers and 1 member of police staff were dismissed for reasons including ‘excess force’⁶⁹.

It is more difficult to find comprehensive information about legal proceedings, prosecutions and convictions. While members of the public can attend police disciplinary hearings, court cases and inquests, details of these proceedings are often not freely or publicly available to those who were unable to attend on the day⁷⁰. It can be difficult to find a comprehensive list of outcomes (prosecutions, disciplinary hearings, inquest conclusions) for all cases following police use of force, in particular if one does not know the name of the individuals involved. The 2017 Angiolini Report notes that:

Of eight prosecutions of police officers in connection with a death in custody in the last 15 years all have ended with acquittals…there has never been a successful prosecution for manslaughter in such cases, despite unlawful killing verdicts in Coroner’s Inquests⁷¹.

Since the publication of the Angiolini report, one officer was charged with murder and an alternative count of unlawful act manslaughter following the death of Dalian Atkinson. The officer was found to be guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in prison in 2021⁷². A second officer involved in the incident was charged with causing actual bodily harm and found not guilty⁷³.

There have been two cases where police forces (Devon and Cornwall Police and the Metropolitan Police Service) were found, or pleaded, guilty under the Health and Safety Act, following the deaths of Thomas Orchard and Jean Charles De Menezes, respectively⁷⁴.

Non-official sources

A number of non-official sources also provide statistics on deaths following police contact, or in police custody. These may include deaths following police use of force, though such deaths are not always readily identifiable. Sources include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The NGO INQUEST, which provides figures that cover deaths in police custody or otherwise following contact with the police. Their figures are from “our monitoring and casework and are independent” of the Home Office and IOPC”⁷⁵. Using these data, and others, INQUEST has also produced a report on racial disproportionality in deaths of Black people following police use of force⁷⁶.
• The preventable deaths tracker which states that they “collect published Prevention of Future Death reports to create an open database that can be used to screen and analyse PFDs, identify trends and disseminate lessons”, in recognition of the lack of a “mechanism to ensure that responses are received, actions are taken, and lessons are learnt to prevent future deaths”⁷⁷.
• The IADCP’s statistical bulletin which “provides a breakdown of all recorded deaths in custody in England and Wales from the start of 2016 to the end of 2019 in… Prisons, patients…detained under the Mental Health Act, Immigration Removal Centres (and) Police custody”⁷⁸.

Part 3: Comparative indicators

I-1a. CK: Number of civilians killed by law enforcement agents on duty, by gunshot	3
I-1b. CKt: Number of civilians killed by law enforcement agents, regardless of means and whether or not on duty	17
I-1c. CW: Number of civilians wounded by law enforcement agents on duty, by gunshot	Data unavailable
I-1d. CWt: Number of civilians wounded by law enforcement agents, whether or not on duty and regardless of means	Data unavailable
I-2. CK per 100000 inhabitants	0.0
I-3. CK per 1000 law enforcement agents	0.1
I-4. CK per 1000 arrests	0.0
I-5. CK per 1000 weapons seized	0.8
I-6. AK: Number of law enforcement officers unlawfully killed on duty by firearm	Data unavailable
I-6b. AKt: Number of law enforcement officers unlawfully killed, whether or not on duty and regardless of means	Data unavailable
I-7. AK per 1000 agents	Data unavailable
A1. Percentage of homicides due to state intervention	2.4
A2. Ratio between CK and AK	Data unavailable
A3. Civilian lethality index: Ratio between CK and CW	Data unavailable
A4. Lethality ratio: Ratio between Civilian lethality index and law enforcement agents lethality index	Data unavailable
A5. Average number of civilians killed by intentional gunshot, per incident	0.6

The Table provides comparative indicators for deaths following police use of force, benchmarked against various figures for the population as a whole. The intention was then to calculate these indexes separately for: a) each ethnic group and b) for each sex/gender group using per habitant indicators. However, for the reasons listed elsewhere, it was not possible to do this for ethnicity and, while providing a breakdown in terms of gender was more feasible, on further examination, all fatalities were male in the year in question. As such, the table has two columns: the first gives calculations based on the total population (males, females, other genders); the second provides calculations based on data for males, where available. Please also note that this table is based on the official IOPC statistics. In these statistics, the IOPC states that “it is important to note that the use of restraint, or other types of force, did not necessarily contribute to the deaths”⁷⁹. Therefore, although their numbers have been used in the table elsewhere for the category of ‘number of civilians killed by public security agents’ —as they are the most reliable official statistics that are publicly made available on this topic,— this does not necessarily imply causality.

Overall, the indicators and ratios that could be calculated were extremely low when compared to many other countries covered by the Lethal Force Monitor; something that may be of little surprise given the comparatively relatively low number of deaths in England and Wales. However, this should not detract from the seriousness of each of these deaths, the need to ensure that lessons are learnt from them where necessary, and concerns about the over-representation of particular population groups, including Black people⁸⁰.

At I-1b, note that the IOPC states that incidents involving off-duty officers were not included in its statistics, although at least one case in its report involves officers that were off-duty at the time the incident started. The average number of civilians killed per incident has been calculated taking into account all incidents in which firearms were discharged, rather than all incidents that caused civilian death or injuries by gunshot, as there are no official statistics for injuries by gunshot available.

Moreover, many indicators could not be calculated, given significant data omissions—including around injuries caused to members of the public by gunshots, and injuries and deaths of officers—in official data. Even where some figures were available, their interpretation was not always clear cut and they were subject to some ambiguity in important ways, as detailed elsewhere in the report on England & Wales. Further, lack of standardised data publication across the numerous police forces that operate in England and Wales meant that figures around, for example, the headcount of officers, were difficult to calculate.

Number of civilians killed and injured

Civilian deaths

As previously discussed, analysis of official statistics from the IOPC indicates that, during the 2019–2020 reporting period, 17 deaths (at least) occurred following the use of force by police officers. However, the IOPC notes that ‘incidents that involve off-duty police personnel are not included in the statistics in this report’⁸¹ — and are therefore, also, not included in this analysis (with one possible exception, detailed shortly). These deaths were comprised of:

• Fatal police shootings, comprising 3 deaths.
• Incidents classified as ‘deaths in or following police custody’. Of the 18 people included in this broad category, the IOPC report notes that “eight… had some force used against them either by officers or by members of the public before their deaths”. However, as the report goes on to state one person was “restrained only by non-police”⁸², in order to err on the side of caution, only 7 cases have been counted in this category.
• Cases classified as “other deaths following police contact that were independently investigated”. Of the 107 people included in this category, the IOPC report notes that “a total of nine people who died following police contact had force used against them. All nine were restrained by police officers or by members of the public… Seven people were known to have been restrained by police officers… Two people were restrained by members of the public only”. Therefore, in order to err on the side of caution, only 7 cases have been counted in this category. It should also be noted that, despite the IOPC report noting previously that incidents involving off-duty officers were not included in its statistics, this section of the report also includes a death following the use of force by two off-duty police officers, which contains no explicit mention of force by on-duty officers⁸³.

Civilian injuries

Official Home Office statistics on police use of firearms do not detail the number of civilians injured in these incidents⁸⁴. While some figures around injury are included in national use of force statistics published by the Home Office, it should be noted that these statistics record the number of incidents resulting in injury, not the number of people injured. Hence the 2019–2020 statistics note that “of the 492,000 incidents recorded, 6% (27,000) reported that the person involved was injured as a result of police use of force” — but this is not, necessarily, the same as the number of people injured. This is because, as the Home Office publication notes, “one ‘use of force incident’ refers to one officer’s use of force involving one person… Where an incident involved more than one person or officer, each officer who used force must complete one use of force report, per person, detailing their own use of force. As such, a singular event or individual” —for example, in this case, an injury to one person— “may feature in multiple use of force reports”⁸⁵.

Number of law enforcement officers killed and injured

No official data is available for the number of law enforcement agents killed on duty, although figures collected by the Police Federation of England and Wales between 2008 and 2019 indicate that 15 officers were killed by criminal act / intent, of which 5 were shot⁸⁶ . However, these figures are not official statistics, are not broken down annually and only cover deaths of officers, not of other police staff on duty who have the power to use force.

The Officer and Staff Safety Review commissioned by the College of Policing and NPCC, published in 2020, recommended “a more logical and better-structured system of reporting, which will allow for the collation and auditable recording of the details of each and every workforce death in the future”⁸⁷.

Correspondence with police representatives for this project indicates that, since this recommendation, a new ICT system / application, the National Police Wellbeing App, has been created and made available to forces, on a voluntary basis, for the purpose of collecting data on deaths and assaults on officers, alongside other indicators⁸⁸. As this was released in 2023, it was not available for the period covered by this report but may prove an additional source of data in the future.

Indicators of use and abuse

Without reasonably valid figures for officer deaths, some indicators cannot be calculated (specifically indicators I-6, I-7, A-2 and A-4). However, other indicators can be calculated using the figure of 17 civilian deaths as a starting point. The rate per 100,000 inhabitants (indicator I-2), of 0.0, was calculated using Office for National Statistics mid-2019 release for England and Wales which estimated the combined population as 59, 439, 840⁸⁹. Calculating the other indicators (I-3, I-4, I-5, A-1 and A-5), was possible but less straightforward.

The rate of civilian killings per 1,000 agents (I-3), of 0.1, was calculated using Home Office Police Workforce figures⁹⁰. These figures were expressed as full-time equivalents and included officers, staff, Police Community Support Officers and designated officers. The total of 218, 421 covers the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales, the National Crime Agency and the British Transport Police. However, these figures did not include data from other agencies with a law enforcement remit in England and Wales, such as the Ministry of Defence Police, the inclusion of which could bring the rate down further.

Calculating the rate of civilian killings per 1, 000 arrests (I-4), again of 0.0, also reveals some interesting data collection and inclusion issues. It should be noted that the figure of 640,000 given in the official statistics excludes some offences dealt with solely in the magistrates’ court (sometimes referred to as less serious cases)⁹¹. The arrest figures aim to cover all 43 territorial Home Office forces, thus omitting non-territorial forces. Moreover, this data release also excludes data from a large territorial force, Greater Manchester Police, who were unable to supply data to the Home Office for these statistics. Due to all these factors, these figures are likely to be an underestimation.

Previous analyses⁹² have included an indicator for civilian killings based on the number of weapons seized (I-5). Official statistics are not produced for this in England and Wales. However, Ministry of Justice figures indicate that 21,498 knife and offensive weapon offences were dealt with by the criminal justice system in 2019–2020⁹³. These figures have been used as the basis for this calculation and give a rate of 0.8 per 1,000 such offenses.

Turning to the abuse indicators, abuse indicator 1 (A-1) —the percentage of homicides due to state intervention, estimated at 2.4%— has been calculated using the Office for National Statistics figures for Homicide in England and Wales⁹⁴. For the reasons given above, the abuse indicators A-2, A-3 and A-4 could not be calculated. The final abuse indicator (A-5) is the average of civilians killed by intentional gunshot per incident. This has been calculated taking into account all incidents in which firearms were discharged⁹⁵, rather than all incidents that caused civilian death or injuries by gunshot, as there are no official statistics for injuries by gunshot available, and averages out at 0.6.

Proportionality of civilian killings

As detailed elsewhere in this country report, it is not consistently possible to work out, from the details provided in the IOPC report, the ethnicity of all of those who have died following police use of force in this year⁹⁶. However other reports have used different methodologies, and data sets, to calculate ethnic disproportionality, often over a longer period. The Government’s progress update⁹⁷ following the Angiolini (2017) report, An Independent Review of Deaths and Serious Incidents in Police Custody, stated that “analysis of the ethnicity of those arrested or detained in police custody when compared with the ethnicity of those who have died during or following police custody during the last ten years is broadly in line and does not suggest that ethnicity impacts the likelihood of dying during or following police custody. Data also does not suggest that black men are more likely to die in custody in cases where use of force or restraint is present. With such small numbers, no firm conclusion can easily be made as to whether there is a correlation between ethnicity and deaths caused by restraint”.

However, as we have seen, and as also noted by INQUEST⁹⁸, deaths following police use of force can be found in many different categories in the IOPC report (including the ‘other’ category); not just cases that have happened in, or following, police custody. Indeed, a report by INQUEST⁹⁹ used multiple methodologies and sources, including looking at published IOPC statistics for the ethnic breakdown of deaths in and following police custody and ‘other’ cases (whether or not these followed police use of force); analysis of INQUEST’s own data; and freedom of information requests to the IOPC. The latter revealed that:

from 2012/13 to 2020/21, there have been 119 deaths involving restraint recorded by the IOPC “in or following police custody” or recorded as “other deaths following police contact”. Of these 23 were of Black people, 86 were White, 5 were Asian and 4 were mixed race. Assuming constant demographic profiles over the period considered, Black people are 6.4 times more likely to die than the proportion of the population they represent. For white people the comparable figure is just 0.84. Using these figures, Black people are seven times more likely to die than White people when restraint was involved. This is a much higher racial disproportionality than that derived from the government’s preferred ‘custody’ dataset (INQUEST 2023 p46).

Turning to gender, this is a little more straightforward, as the descriptions of the fatal incidents covered by the report include the gender of the deceased. However, in the year in question there was no variation on the grounds of gender, with the 17 fatalities following police use of force all involving male members of the public (indicators I-1a and I-1b). The table provided a rate of deaths per 100, 000 of the total population (a rate of 0.0); calculating this per 100, 000 of the male population gives a slightly higher rate of 0.1¹⁰⁰ (indicator 1-2). Disaggregating indicator 1-3 (civilians killed per 1000 public security agents) to look at only male fatalities and male officers / members of staff gives a rate of 0.1; the same rate when all genders are combined¹⁰¹. Similarly, disaggregating indicator 1-4 (civilians killed per 1000 arrests) to focus on the rate of males killed per 1000 arrests made of male members of the public gives a rate of 0.0; the same rate when all genders are combined. Finally, calculating the percentage of homicides due to state intervention as a percentage of all male homicides in the year in question (as opposed to all homicides, regardless of the gender of the victim) gives a slightly higher rate of 3.4%¹⁰². It was not possible to provide a gendered analysis of the other indicators; either because the data was not available at all (as detailed above), or because the data was not broken down by gender.

Summary and recommendations

This case study has assessed England and Wales across a range of internationally comparable indicators around police use of lethal force, including: legal frameworks (including national and international law and regulations); policies and procedures around data collection, publication, analysis, investigations and lessons learnt; and comparative indicators for deaths following police use of force. Certain features of the English and Welsh system constitute relatively good practice when looked at internationally. However, in an area as important as deaths following police use of force, there is no room for complacency. Regrettably, we note that recommendations from previous reports (including the Angiolini report, amongst others) have yet to be fully addressed. As such, we refer the reader to the recommendations in our previous report, which pertain predominantly to Section 2 of this case study remain unchanged, and unaddressed. Please see Appendix A for these recommendations in full. Additionally, the added research conducted for Section 1 (legal frameworks) and Section 3 (comparative indicators) of this case study has also highlighted some further areas to be addressed as follows.

On legal frameworks (Part 1)

We recommend that the State, police and College of Policing should ensure that:

• The law and legal frameworks applying to the use of force (whether criminal or civil) hold officers to account and permit convictions of State agents where necessary, both in theory and in practice. Following the W80 case, this may represent an opportunity to review, through a public, consultative and transparent process, the legal framework that applies to State agents who use force and any training implications.
• guidance (APP) for the use of all less lethal weapons and use of force is published and in line with international norms and standards, including recommendations made by UN bodies.

On comparative indicators (Part 3)

We recommend that the IOPC:

• Use a more inclusive definition of police use of force / restraint. We note that, at present, police restraint is defined as referring “to a range of actions, including physical holds and pressure compliance. It does not include the routine use of handcuffs, unless another form of restraint was also used”¹⁰³. This arguably excludes handcuffing as a use of force in its own right and a more inclusive definition —including handcuffs as a use of force— would be helpful.
• Clearly disaggregate deaths following police use of force in its Deaths During or Following Police Contact report, both in the main text and in the tables in the Appendix, in order to allow readers to see clearly at a glance how many deaths have followed police use of force and a clear description of each of these cases. These deaths should also be disaggregated by key demographic groups, including ethnicity and gender. This echoes a number of previous recommendations in this area; indeed, as the report by INQUEST notes, “there is still no publicly available ethnic breakdown for all deaths following police restraint — despite it being a key recommendation of the Angiolini report”.
• Provide clarity about when force was used a) by members of the public and b) by officers and a clearer description of each of the cases where force was used in order to avoid any confusion or ambiguity where possible; we appreciate there may be times where the full facts are not available at the time the report goes to press.
• Ensure that independent investigations are conducted into all deaths following police use of force; that all such deaths are captured in the IOPC report; and that these investigations are conducted effectively, so as to avoid (wherever possible) the need to reopen investigations at a later date, and promptly, so as to minimise delays.
• Ensure the IOPC provides clear reasons for its decisions so as to support public understanding and confidence in the system.

We recommend that the Home Office, police agencies and / or other relevant bodies:

• Collect and publish statistics on deaths of police officers and staff, and on the types of force used in any such fatal attacks.
• Collect and publish data on the number of civilians and police officers and staff who receive non-fatal injuries in use of force incidents. This should include, but not be limited to, cases where people are injured following the use of firearms by the police. This will likely involve changes to the national use of force data collection system, which currently collects injury data but not in a readily accessible manner.
• Compile national data for both Home Office and non-Home Office forces on other key indicators, including arrests, staffing levels and their gender breakdown.
• Disaggregate this information by ethnicity, gender and other relevant demographic characteristics.

However, we again underscore that data collection and analysis will not, in themselves, bring about improvements, and changes to policies and practices. These can only be achieved by learning the lessons from past deaths and implementing the previous recommendations made in this regard.

References, data sources and downloads

1 The wording of ‘law enforcement’ and / or ‘public security agents’ is used to indicate that we are defining law enforcement broadly, so as to cover not just the police but officials from other agencies when they are undertaking law enforcement functions (for example, cases where the military may be called into undertake policing duties). While this may not currently be an issue in England and Wales, it is a practice encountered internationally and we have adopted this language here to ensure that terminology is consistent throughout.

2 E. Angiolini, Report of the Independent Review of Deaths and Serious Incidents in Police Custody, London, self-published, 2017, p.13. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/655401/Report_of_Angiolini_Review_ISBN_Accessible.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023).

3 College of Policing, About us, https://www.college.police.uk/About/Pages/default.aspx and Home Office, About us, https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/home-office/about (both undated, accessed 21 August 2023).

4 With the exception of the Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police (because London and Manchester have directly elected Mayors), each territorial police service has a directly elected Police and Crime Commissioner, with a remit to hold the police force, and chief constable, to account and deliver an effective and efficient police service in their area.

5 HMICFRS have a remit to independently assess and report on the efficiency and effectiveness of police forces in England and Wales.

6 The Supreme Court (2023) Press Summary: R (on the application of Officer W80) (Appellant) v Director General of the Independent Office for Police Conduct and others (Respondents) [2023] UKSC 24 On appeal from: [2020] EWCA Civ 1301. Available online at https://www.supremecourt.uk/press-summary/uksc-2020-0208.html (accessed 21 August 2023).

7 College of Policing, New safety training for all officers, London, self-published, 2023. Available online at https://www.college.police.uk/article/new-safety-training-officers (accessed 21 August 2023).

8 College of Policing, Code of Ethics: Code of Practice for the Principles and Standards of Professional Behaviour for the Policing Profession of England and Wales, London, self-published, 2014. Available online at https://assets.college.police.uk/s3fs-public/2021-02/code_of_ethics.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023).

9 United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent End of mission statement by the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent following its country visit to the UK (18-27 January 2023), containing its preliminary findings and recommendations. 2023. Available online at: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/racism/wgeapd/statements/2023-01-27/eom-statement-UK-WGEPAD-2023-01-27.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023).

10 Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Visit to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland undertaken from 9 to 18 September 2019: recommendations and observations addressed to the State party: Report of the Subcommittee. 2021. Available at https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CAT%2FOP%2FGBR%2FROSP%2F1 (accessed 21 August 2023).

11 www.policinglaw.info, (accessed 21 August 2023).

12 Information from this section is taken largely from www.PolicingLaw.info (accessed 21 August 2023), with some additions and some updating.

13 The Supreme Court op. cit.

14 Judiciary of England and Wales, Regina-V-Benjamin Monk: Sentencing remarks of His Honour Judge Melbourne Inman QC Recorder of Birmingham, 2021, available online at https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/R-v-Monk-Sentencing-Remarks.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023).

15 INQUEST, Dalian Atkinson: police officer sentenced for manslaughter, 2021. Available online at https://www.inquest.org.uk/dalian-atkinson-police-officer-sentenced

16 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/07/lawrence-revelations-institutional-racism-met-police

17 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/aug/24/ipcc-upholds-protester-complaint-police

18 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-20821048

19 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/09/bijan-ebrahimi-murder-bristol-police-sentenced

20 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/05/police-failure-protect-bijan-ebrahimi-murder-ipcc

21 https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Marc-Cole-2020-0087-Redacted.pdf

22 Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, Coroners Courts, 2023. Available online at https://www.judiciary.uk/courts-and-tribunals/coroners-courts/ (accessed 21 August 2023).

23 Crown Prosecution Service, Coroners, 2021. Available online at https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/coroners (accessed 21 August 2023).

24 Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, Coroners Courts, 2023. Available online at https://www.judiciary.uk/courts-and-tribunals/coroners-courts/(accessed 21 August 2023).

25 IOPC, About us, undated. Available online at https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/about-us (accessed 21 August 2023).

26 IOPC, What We Investigate and Next Steps, https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/investigations/what-we-investigate-and-next-steps, (accessed 21 August 2023).

27 The annual publication is available at https://policeconduct.gov.uk/research-and-learning/statistics/annual-deaths-during-or-following-police-contact-statistics. (accessed 21 August 2023). In addition, the IOPC notes that ‘we publish full investigation reports for the most serious and high-profile incidents. Reports will sometimes be redacted to remove sensitive or private information…We remove news releases and investigation reports from our website six months after completing an investigation’, IOPC Our Investigations, 2023, available online at https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/our-work/investigations (accessed 21 August 2023).

28 IOPC, Deaths During or Following Police Contact: Statistics for England and Wales 2019 – 2020. London, self-published, London, 2020. Available online at https://policeconduct.gov.uk/research-and-learning/statistics/annual-deaths-during-or-following-police-contact-statistics (accessed 21 August 2023).

29 Home Office, Police Use of Force Statistics, England and Wales April 2018 to March 2019, London, self-published, 2019, p.22, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/853204/police-use-of-force-apr2018-mar2019-hosb3319.pdf

30 Ibid.

31 Home Office Police use of force statistics, England and Wales: April 2019 to March 2020: Experimental Statistics, London, self-published, 2020, available online at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-use-of-force-statistics-england-and-wales-april-2019-to-march-2020 (accessed 21 August 2023).

32 IOPC, Deaths During or Following Police Contact Annual Report: Guidance, London, self-published, 2018. Available online at, https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Documents/statistics/Guidance_IOPC_Annual_Death_Report.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023).

33 IOPC, 2020, op. cit., p10

34 For the purposes of this exercise, and due to ambiguous wording used in the description of individual incidents, we have used the figures provided by the IOPC, but is important to note this ambiguity.

35 IOPC, 2020, op. cit. p.2

36 IOPC, 2020, op. cit., p.6.

37 IOPC communication with research team (9 October 2020)

38 Home Office, User Guide to ‘Police Use of Force Statistics, England and Wales’, London, self-published, 2019, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/853006/user-guide-police-use-of-force.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023).

39 B. Rappert B, O. Adang, A. Daillère, J. De Paepe, A. Dymond, M. Easton, S. Skinner. Police Lethal Force and Accountability: Monitoring Deaths in Western Europe. Exeter, self-published, 2021. https://lethal-force-monitor.org/downloads/police-lethal-force-report.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023).

40 Ibid, p.10.

41 Home Office, 2019, op. cite. p.21.

42 For example, IOPC, Learning Recommendations, London, self-published, undated. Available online at https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/our-work/learning/recommendations (accessed 21 August 2023).

43 The Ministerial Council on Deaths in Custody replaced the Ministerial Roundtable on Suicide and the Forum for Preventing Deaths in Custody. For further detail on the historical context of the Ministerial Council, see the Ministry of Justice, Tailored Review of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody, London, self-published 2017, p.5, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/777178/tailored-review-of-the-independent-advisory-panel-on-deaths-in-custody.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023).

44 Ibid.

45 E. Angiolini, Report of the Independent Review of Deaths and Serious Incidents in Police Custody, London, self-published, 2017, p.13, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/655401/Report_of_Angiolini_Review_ISBN_Accessible.pdf, (accessed 21 August 2023).

46 HM Government, Deaths in Police Custody: Progress Update, London, self-published 2018, p.2. Available online at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/deaths-in-police-custody-progress-update/deaths-in-police-custody-progress-update-2018-accessible-version (accessed 21 August 2023).

47 Home Office, Deaths in police custody: Government Update – 2021, self-published, London, 2021, p3. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/deaths-in-police-custody-progress-update/deaths-in-police-custody-progress-update-2021-accessible (accessed 21 August 2023).

48 M. Townsend, ‘Report into deaths in custody in England and Wales kicked into long grass’, The Observer, 1 November 2020. Available online at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/01/report-into-deaths-in-custody-in-england-and-wales-kicked-into-long-grass (accessed 21 August 2023).

49 IADPC, Preventing deaths at point of arrest, during and after police custody: a review of police practice submitted to the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody by Police and Crime Commissioners and associated bodies.Self-published; London, 2022. Available online at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c5ae65ed86cc93b6c1e19a3/t/6388b91b75841a78d6f60a5d/1669904667925/IAPDC+-+Police+prevention+of+deaths+report+December+-+final+draft+as+published+EMBARGOED.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023).

50 House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, Police Conduct and Complaints: Sixth Report of Session 2021–22. London, self-published, 2022, p50. Available online at https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5802/cmselect/cmhaff/1264/report.html (accessed 21 August 2023).

51 Crown Prosecution Service 2021 op. cit.

52 Birmingham City Council, Coroners Inquests: Access to recent inquest files, Birmingham, self-published, undated. Available online at https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/info/50164/family_history_research/1560/coroner_inquests/4 (accessed 21 August 2023).

53 Chief Coroner, Prevention of future deaths reports publication policy, London, self-published 2021. Available online at https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/PFD-publication-policy-9-11-21.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023).

54 House of Commons Library, Police Complaints and Discipline. London, self-published, 2020. Available online at https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN02056/SN02056.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023).

55 IOPC, Becoming the IOPC, London, self-published, undated. Available online at https://policeconduct.gov.uk/becoming-iopc, (accessed 21 August 2023).

56 IOPC, Our Investigations. London, self-published, 2023. Available online at: https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/our-work/investigations (accessed 21 August 2023). See also IOPC Policy on the publication of final investigation reports and report summaries, London, self-published, 2018. Available online at https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/publications/policy-publication-final-investigation-reports-and-report-summaries (accessed 21 August 2023).

57 To give a few examples, see Angiolini 2017, op. cit., Rappert et al 2020 op. cit., and INQUEST I can’t breathe: Race, death and British Policing. London, self-published, 2023. Available online at https://www.inquest.org.uk/i-cant-breathe-race-death-british-policing#:~:text=In%20%E2%80%98I%20can%E2%80%99t%20breathe%E2%80%99%3A%20Race%2C%20death%20and%20British,to%20examine%20how%20accountability%20for%20racism%20is%20delivered (accessed 21 August 2023).

58 Crown Prosecution Service, Deaths in Custody, London, self-published, 2020. Available online at https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/deaths-custody (accessed 21 August 2023).

59 It should also be noted that Judge-led inquests have been held for at least two of the deaths (Sudesh Amman and Usman Khan) which occurred during this time period as well, or instead, of a Jury led inquest. See Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, Judge-Led Inquests, London, self-published, undated, available online at https://www.judiciary.uk/courts-and-tribunals/coroners-courts/judge-led-inquests/ (accessed 21 August 2023).

60 B. Rappert B, O. Adang, A. Daillère, J. De Paepe, A. Dymond, M. Easton, S. Skinner. Police Lethal Force and Accountability: Monitoring Deaths in Western Europe. Exeter, self-published, 2021. https://lethal-force-monitor.org/downloads/police-lethal-force-report.pdf

61 The term ‘independent’ investigation has been used here for ease of reference as this reflects the terminology used by the IOPC; it should not be interpreted as implying a judgement by the authors on the degree of independence displayed in any investigation conducted.

62 Of the two remaining cases in this category, 1 was subject to a ‘local’ investigation and 1 was referred back to force.

63 INQUEST, INQUEST report of the Family Listening Day for the Independent Police Complaints Commission, London, self-published, 2018, p.14, https://www.inquest.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=6df8ac79-3c8a-4fc9-8761-289d1d652558 (accessed 21 August 2023).

64 Home Affairs Select Committee (2022), ibid, p50.

65 IOPC communication with author, dated 09/10/2020.

66 IOPC, IOPC announces reinvestigation into police contact with Darren Cumberbatch prior to his death, London, self-published, 2022, available online at:

https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/news/iopc-announces-reinvestigation-police-contact-darren-cumberbatch-prior-his-death#:~:text=IOPC%20announces%20reinvestigation%20into%20police%20contact%20with%20Darren%20Cumberbatch%20prior%20to%20his%20death,-Published%3A%2028%20Jul&text=The%20Independent%20Office%20for%20Police,death%20in%20hospital%20in%202017 (accessed 21 August 2023)

67 INQUEST, Kevin Clarke: Family respond to gross misconduct decision on Met officers involved in restraint related death, London, self-published, 2022, available online at https://www.inquest.org.uk/kevin-clarke-misconduct-announced. (accessed 21 August 2023).

68 INQUEST, Oladeji Omishore: Family call for action one year on, London, self-published, 2023, available online at https://www.inquest.org.uk/oladeji-omishore-one-year-on (accessed 21 August 2023).

69 College of Policing (2020) Police dismissals (Home Office forces) Numbers of Barred List between 1 April 2019 – 31 March 2020. London, self-published, available online at https://assets.college.police.uk/s3fs-public/2020-11/Police-dismissals-Home-Office-forces-2019-2020.pdf p12 and p35 (accessed 21 August 2023).

70 See also D. Baker, ‘Researching Deaths after Police Contact: Challenges and Solutions’, Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice, vol 2, no. 1, 2016, pp.15-27

71 E. Angiolini, op. cit., pp.24-25.

72 Crown Prosecution Service, PC who killed Dalian Atkinson jailed; London, self-published, 2021. Available online at https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/pc-who-killed-dalian-atkinson-jailed (accessed 21 August 2023).

73 West Mercia Police West Mercia Police officer found not guilty of assault. Worcester, self-published, 2022 Available online https://www.westmercia.police.uk/news/west-mercia/news/2022/september/west-mercia-police-officer-found-not-guilty-of-assault/(accessed 21 August 2023).

74 INQUEST, Hearing for Health and Safety prosecution of Devon and Cornwall Police to determine whether breaches caused Thomas Orchard’s death, London, self-published, 2019. Available online at https://www.inquest.org.uk/thomas-orchard-newton-hearing (accessed 21 August 2023).

75 The data are available at https://www.inquest.org.uk/deaths-in-police-custody (accessed 21 August 2023).

76 INQUEST I can’t breathe: Race, death and British Policing. London, self-published, 2023. Available online at https://www.inquest.org.uk/i-cant-breathe-race-death-british-policing#:~:text=In%20%E2%80%98I%20can%E2%80%99t%20breathe%E2%80%99%3A%20Race%2C%20death%20and%20British,to%20examine%20how%20accountability%20for%20racism%20is%20delivered (accessed 21 August 2023).

77 This is available at https://preventabledeathstracker.net/about/ (accessed 21 August 2023).

78 This is available at Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody, Statistical analysis of recorded deaths in custody between 2016 and 2019, London, self-published, 2021. Available online at https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c5ae65ed86cc93b6c1e19a3/t/61a10d3c3b53df1223948194/1637944636899/IAPDC+statistical+analysis+report+-+November+2021.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023).

79 IOPC 2020, op. cit. p15.

80 INQUEST (2023), op. cit.

81 IOPC 2020 op. cit., p2.

82 IOPC 2020 op. cit., p15.

83 IOPC 2020 ibid, P28. It is not clear whether this case, involving off-duty officers, is included in the 7 deaths but, as the report refers to the off-duty officers acting as ‘police officers’, and this case is listed as separate from two cases where force was used by members of the public, it would make sense for it to have been included in this count. A fuller breakdown of the cases included in the overall total, and the ability to cross-reference with the cases listed in the text (perhaps via the use of anonymised indicators) would assist here.

84 Home Office, Police use of firearms statistics England and Wales: April 2019 to March 2020 Self-published, London, self-published, 2020. Available online at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/907015/police-use-firearms-statistics-england-and-wales-april-2019-to-march-2020-hosb2120.pdf(accessed 21 August 2023).

85 Ibid, p3

86 As detailed in College of Policing and National Police Chiefs Council, Officer and Staff Safety Review. London; self-published, 2020. Available online at https://assets.college.police.uk/s3fs-public/2020-09/CoP-NPCC-Officer-Staff-Safety-Review.pdf, (accessed 21 August 2023), p45

87 ibid, p43

88 Communication with author, dated 02/06/2023, 26/06/2023 and 25/07/2023.

89 Office for National Statistics Population estimates for the UK, England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland: mid-2019; London, self-published, 2020, p10. Available online at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/annualmidyearpopulationestimates/mid2019estimates (accessed 21 August 2023). These give the mid-2019 population for England as 56,286,961 and the population for Wales as 3,152,879, giving a total of 59, 439, 840, of which 29,382,509 are males.

90 Home Office Police workforce, England and Wales, as at 31 March 2020 second edition, London, self-published, 2020. p1 indicates that that “The total workforce (officers, staff, Police Community Support Officers and designated officers) were at 210,620 FTE”& as of 31 March 2020 in the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales. Home Office Police workforce, England and Wales, 31 March 2020: Data tables, London, self-published,2020, table 1 indicates 4, 837 officers (warranted and not warranted) for the NCA, and 2, 964 for the British Transport Police. No overall breakdown of total workforce by gender is provided; however figures (in FTE) are provided by gender for police officers; police staff and designated officers and PSCOs (please see tables D2, H10 and H11) in the aforementioned publication respectively. Collectively, these give a total of 121, 767 FTE males in the workforce. However, it is likely this is an underestimate as certain agencies (e.g. for the National Crime Agency) are excluded from the tables that provide a gender breakdown. It should therefore not be considered definitive, but perhaps should be considered more of a minimum number.

91 Home Office Arrest Statistics Police powers and procedures 2019 – 2020. London, self-published, 2020. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-powers-and-procedures-england-and-wales-year-ending-31-march-2020 (accessed 21 August 2023). Data table A_01a indicates that there were 640,000 people arrested for notifiable offenses, of which 546, 000 were male.

92 For example, Monitor Fuerza Letal, Monitor of Use of Lethal Force in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Comparative Study of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Jamaica, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela, self-published, 2022. Available online at https://www.monitorfuerzaletal.com/docs/MonitorFuerzaLetal_2022_verA.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023).

93 Ministry of Justice, Official statistics: Knife and offensive weapon sentencing statistics: year ending March 2020 London, self-published, 2020. Available online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/knife-and-offensive-weapon-sentencing-statistics-year-ending-march-2020 (accessed 21 August 2023).

94 These indicate 695 victims of homicide in the year ending March 2020, of which 506 were male and 188 were female. Please note that totals may not necessarily sum due to unknown / missing demographic information and that these statistics do not appear to have a category for other / non-binary genders. ONS Homicide in England and Wales: year ending March 2020 London, self-published, 2021. Available online at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/homicideinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2020#:~:text=1.,showed%20a%201%25%20increase%20overall (accessed 21 August 2023).

95 Home Office Police use of firearms statistics England and Wales: April 2019 to March 2020 London, Self-published, 2020, available online at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/907015/police-use-firearms-statistics-england-and-wales-april-2019-to-march-2020-hosb2120.pdf (accessed 21 August 2023). The total number of incidents in which police firearms were discharged is given as 5 (on p7) and the number of deaths is given by the IOPC as 3, as detailed above.

96 As noted elsewhere, while the IOPC report consistently mentions the gender of those who died, it does not consistently provide their ethnicity. While the ethnicity of the deceased is stated in the detailed qualitative description of cases that fall under ‘fatal shootings’ (with two men described as ‘Asian’ and the third described as ‘Black’), it is not consistently listed in the description of cases that are categorised under ‘deaths in or following police custody’ or ‘other deaths’. While the IOPC provides a breakdown by ethnic group of those who died following the use of force for each of these two categories, because it conflates cases where the police have used force with cases where members of the public (but not the police) have used force, the precise ethnic breakdown of cases following police use of force remains unclear.

97 HM Government, Deaths in police custody: progress update 2021. London, self-published, 2021. Available online at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/deaths-in-police-custody-progress-update/deaths-in-police-custody-progress-update-2021-accessible (accessed 21 August 2023).

98 INQUEST 2023 op. cit.

99 INQUEST 2023 op. cit.

100 Based on ONS population estimates of 29,382,509 men in England and Wales for 2019 from ONS Office for National Statistics, Population estimates for the UK, England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland: mid-2019; London, self-published, 2020. Available online at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/annualmidyearpopulationestimates/mid2019estimates (accessed 21 August 2023).

101 Home Office Police workforce, England and Wales, as at 31 March 2020 second edition, London, self-published, 2020. p1 indicates that that “the total workforce (officers, staff, Police Community Support Officers and designated officers) were at 210,620 FTE” as of 31 March 2020 in the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales and Home Office Police workforce, England and Wales, 31 March 2020: Data tables, London, self-published, 2020, table 1 indicates 4, 837 officers (warranted and not warranted) for the NCA, and 2, 964 for the British Transport Police. No overall breakdown of total workforce by gender is provided; however figures (in FTE) are provided by gender for police officers; police staff and designated officers and PSCOs (please see tables D2, H10 and H11) respectively. Collectively, these give a total of 121, 767 FTE males in the workforce. However, It is likely this is an underestimate as certain agencies (e.g. for the National Crime Agency) are excluded from the tables that provide a gender breakdown. It should therefore not be considered definitive, but perhaps should be considered more of a minimum number.

102 ONS statistics indicate 695 victims of homicide in the year ending March 2020, of which 506 were male and 188 were female. Please note that totals may not necessarily sum due to unknown / missing demographic information and that these statistics do not appear to have a category for other / non-binary genders. ONS Homicide in England and Wales: year ending March 2020, London, self-published, 2021, Available online at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/homicideinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2020#:~:text=1.,showed%20a%201%25%20increase%20overall (accessed 21 August 2023).

103 IOPC 2020, op. cit., p10