Deaths in police custody at highest level in decade

Deaths involving police custody are at their highest level for a decade.

Twenty-three people died in or following a period in the cells from April 2017 to March 2018, revealed the Independent Office for Police Conduct – up nine from the previous year.

Michael Lockwood, the office’s director-general, said: “The rise in deaths in police custody this year, which includes at the point of arrest, in transit, in cells or in hospital, is concerning viewed against a trend of falling numbers over the last decade.”

The highest modern figures came in 1998, when there were 65 such deaths.