FOI 0222-2025/26 Suicide Following Police Contact
Request
Q1. The number of recorded suicides in the uk where the deceased was under active police investigation at the time of death.
Q2. A breakdown of these cases by:
- a) Type of investigation (e.g., criminal, misconduct, other)
- b) Duration between investigation commencement and death
- c) Whether the deceased had been interviewed under caution
Q3. Any internal policies or assessments regarding suicide risk for individuals under investigation.
Clarification:
2020 to 2025 would be ideal but any full year that would be a sample would be ok. Ie 2023 to 2024.
Q4. Also, if it’s possible here - whether any investigation takes place post suicide and whether at those inventions that have taken place, police officers were found to have fabricated or mishandled evidence.
Extent and Result of Searches to Locate Information
To locate the information relevant to your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police.
Decision
I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.
Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is required to retrieve that information.
In order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to manually review all crimes where the outcome is recorded as ‘offender died’, to determine the number which were recorded as suicide. A further review would be required to determine the duration between the commencement of the investigation and death, whether the deceased had been interviewed under caution, and what, if any, investigation has taken place as a result, which would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act. Additionally, it is not known whether the information retrieved would be an accurate representation or reliable set of data.
Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.
As a gesture of goodwill and in accordance with my duty under Section 16 of the Act to advise and assist, I can confirm that the Independent Office for Polic Conduct publish data relating to deaths following police contact, which is available using the below link:
Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.