Non-custodial deaths: Missing, ignored or unimportant?
| Author | Jake Phillips,Loraine Gelsthorpe,Nicola Padfield |
| Published date | 01 April 2019 |
| Date | 01 April 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895817745939 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895817745939
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2019, Vol. 19(2) 160 –178
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895817745939
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Non-custodial deaths: Missing,
ignored or unimportant?
Jake Phillips
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Loraine Gelsthorpe
University of Cambridge, UK
Nicola Padfield
University of Cambridge, UK
Abstract
This article presents the findings from two separate pieces of research that were conducted by the
authors on deaths that occur within the criminal justice system, but outside custodial settings. The
article begins with a review of the literature on deaths both within and outside custody before going
through the research findings which inform the article. The overarching argument is that deaths
outside custodial settings are less understood, and receive much less scrutiny and public attention than
equivalent deaths that occur in custody. We explore the reasons for this neglect, drawing attention
to policy, methodological and sociological factors. We conclude by reflecting on possible ways of
overcoming this neglect by drawing on a body of work which argues in favour of an ethic of care.
Keywords
Ethic of care, non-natural deaths, police, prison, probation
Introduction
In this article we reflect on the findings of two pieces of research which we have con-
ducted, both of which examined the deaths of offenders that occurred in the criminal
justice system, but outside of custodial settings. The article explores what we know about
Corresponding author:
Jake Phillips, Department of Law and Criminology, Sheffield Hallam University, Heart of the Campus,
Collegiate Crescent, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S10 2BQ, UK.
Email: Jake.Phillips@shu.ac.uk
745939CRJ0010.1177/1748895817745939Criminology & Criminal JusticePhillips et al.
research-article2017
Article
Phillips et al. 161
the extent of the problem (i.e. how many criminal justice deaths occur outside secure
settings), as well as some reasons why such deaths are neglected, both in research and in
policy. We also consider what more might be done to prevent these deaths. The article
begins with an overview of the literature on deaths that occur within criminal justice set-
tings, as well as a discussion of the relevant legal and policy frameworks. Deaths in
custody, be they in prisons or police stations, receive much greater attention from poli-
cymakers, researchers and the media than do deaths outside these settings. While this
may not be surprising, the neglect of non-natural deaths that occur outside of these set-
tings is concerning and worthy of significantly greater levels of attention.
The first piece of research that we examine here concerned deaths of people under
probation supervision and was conducted on behalf of the Howard League for Penal
Reform in 2010, published in 2012 (Gelsthorpe et al., 2012). The second focused on
deaths that occurred within 48 hours of people leaving police custody or 28 days of them
leaving prison, and was commissioned by the Equality and Human Rights Commission
(EHRC) in 2015, and published in 2016 (Phillips et al., 2016). We describe the datasets
that were generated for both pieces of research, focusing on the difficulties in obtaining
them. None of the datasets were of sufficient quality to determine the precise extent of
the numbers of people who die while in contact with the criminal justice system. That
said, we outline the main findings of both pieces of research.
We then turn to the crux of the problem – that such deaths are largely neglected and,
drawing upon our experiences, we reflect on why this might be. We argue that this
neglect stems from a range of policy, methodological and societal/sociological issues.
Finally, the article explores what an ethic of care might look like and how it might help
to bring issues to light, as well as helping to prevent similar deaths in the future.
What Can We Learn from Previous Research?
A criminal justice-related death might be the death of someone who has been released
from a police station with or without charge, or of someone released from prison on
licence. A death might occur at any point along the criminal justice ‘process’, and this
contact with ‘criminal justice’ might be relevant to the death. However, to date, the focus
of research on deaths in the criminal justice system has been on those deaths which occur
in the prison estate, or in police stations (or at the hands of the police in the course of
their duties). These deaths also get the most media and policy attention. In the next sec-
tion of the article we explore existing research on five categories of deaths of people who
were engaged, to varying degrees, with the criminal justice system.
Deaths in prison
Deaths in prison have been scrutinized by governments, charities and academic research-
ers for many years. The psychological pains of imprisonment have long been considered
in prison research (Sykes, 1958) and, since the 1980s, there have been several important
studies into deaths in prison, with a particular focus on suicide (e.g. Biles, 1991; Crighton
and Towl, 1997; Dooley, 1990; Liebling, 1995). Moreover, they have also been the sub-
ject of several official reviews and inquiries such as the EHRC’s (2015) inquiry into
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