Deaths in Prison Custody in Scotland 2012-2022

11. Additional analyses

Deaths in custody by time spent in (most recent) prison establishment when death occured

SPS hold data on the amount of time an individual had been held in the prison establishment in which they died or where resident at the time of death (in the case of say hospital deaths). This is used here as a rough proxy for the amount of time individuals have spent in custody but it must be noted that individuals may move between prison establishments during their time in custody. Therefore, there may be an undercount of time spent in custody using this measure. It is anticipated that future analyses using the official national prison statistics could be used to consider the complete custodial journey of individuals who have died in custody to explore in full, time spent in custody.

Using full calendar year data for 2012 to 2022 (350 deaths in total), around half of all deaths (173) occurred within 365 days (or 1 year) of the individual entering the (most recent) prison establishment. 25 individuals died within 7 days of entering the (most recent) prison establishment, and a further 35 within 30 days (Figure 15).

Deaths in custody by SIMD quintile on arrival

As noted earlier, a significant proportion of arrivals to custody were from the most deprived areas of Scotland and research evidence suggests that living in a deprived area is linked to poorer health outcomes, higher drug use and increased mortality rates^[7][8]. This section assesses deaths in custody against an individual’s residential address SIMD quintile on arrival to prison custody.

SPS record the residential address and postcode (where available) of each individual who enters custody. Of those who died in custody in the full calendar years 2012-2022, this information is held for 320 of the total 350 individuals.

It is estimated that around 47% (149 of 320) of those with addresses held on record, arrived in custody from an address within SIMD quintile 1, the 20% most deprived areas of Scotland. However, as noted earlier, SIMD is an area-based measure of relative deprivation therefore not every person from areas ranked as ‘most deprived’ by the SIMD will themselves be experiencing high levels of deprivation or the outcomes associated with living in those areas.

Figure 16.shows the distribution of deaths (of those with addresses held on record) across all SIMD quintiles.