Deaths in Prison Custody in Scotland 2012-2022

10. Deaths in custody by cause of death

SPS publish the cause of death for every death occurring in prison custody. In 2019, the way in which cause of death was collected and published was amended. To allow comparison of cause of death over time, SPS analysts have attributed cause of death to one of three broad categories across the time series. The categories are: intentional self-harm; poisonings; and other deaths. As already noted earlier, the NRS will shortly be leading further analysis which will examine cause of death in greater detail and provide comparisons to trends in the general population. The NRS categorisation of deaths will follow that applied in their official population statistics which is based on the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision (ICD-10), so will differ from what is reported here. There is therefore a chance that future analysis may differ in terms of numbers in the overall categories.

SPS has categorised a cause of death as being Intentional Self-Harm under ICD-10 coding (suicide) where ‘hanging’, ‘suspension by ligature’ or ‘asphyxia’ appeared anywhere in the cause of death. Cause of death has been categorised as Poisonings in the ICD-10 coding (drug-related) where any drugs were mentioned in the cause of death, even if not the primary cause. This was done, under the assumption that access to drugs exacerbated any pre-existing health condition also listed and so will have contributed to the death.

Where cause of death is not currently known for older data, any cause of death listed as ‘suicide’ has been categorised as Intentional Self-Harm, and any death listed as ‘drug-related’ or ‘event of unknown intent/overdose’ has been coded as Poisonings. Two deaths in 2014 logged in the public data as ‘event of unknown intent’ are known from their subsequent Fatal Accident Inquiries (FAIs) to be drug-related and so have been coded as such.

The ‘other deaths’ category includes deaths due to disease and other natural causes, deaths attributed to Covid-19 and homicide. It should be noted that over the time period considered for this analysis, only three homicides were recorded. Future analyses will seek to consider these cases in more detail.

Of the 350 deaths recorded between 2012 and 2022, 103 occurred due to intentional self-harm, 48 were attributed to poisonings, and 199 fall into the other deaths category, which accounted for the majority.

Looking at the cause of deaths by year, Figure 14 shows that in most years (with the exception of 2016 and 2017) ‘other deaths’ account for the majority of deaths. ‘Other deaths’ also appear to have increased across 2020-2022. ‘Poisonings’ comprise a small number of deaths in most years (except 2015), although there was a spike in ‘poisonings’ in 2021. The number is reduced in 2022. There is no clear trend in the number of deaths attributed to ‘intentional self-harm’ which has fluctuated between 4 and 14 across the time period for which data is available.