What happened
In August 2004 a 14-year-old boy from Burnley was on remand at Hassockfield Secure Training Centre in County Durham, charged with wounding another young person. The inquest heard he was an “extremely troubled and vulnerable young man” with a history of cannabis abuse.
On the day he died he argued with a staff member in the association area. Four care officers lifted him and carried him face down into his room. On the way, one of them used the Nose Distraction Technique, a sharp painful blow to the nose, to stop the boy biting him. His nose bled.
He was left alone to calm down. He spoke to staff and did not seem especially despondent. Six hours later he was found dead in that room.
The outcome
A second inquest sat at Easington, County Durham, opening on 10 January 2011 and concluding on 26 January 2011.
The jury found that an unlawful use of force contributed to his decision to take his own life, and that he had been unlawfully restrained and hurt in a way that contributed to it. It found a serious system failure that had produced an unlawful regime. The technique used on him was withdrawn, and the case drove changes to the use of force on children in custody.
The European Court of Human Rights later found the United Kingdom in breach of Article 2 in respect of the investigation.
What went wrong
The force was unlawful, and the system around it was not working.
Staff had not been properly trained in the high risk assessment procedures designed to protect trainees who might self-harm. They had not been trained in suicide awareness or behaviour management, and their training in Physical Control in Care was inadequate. The inquest found that the Youth Justice Board should have known the techniques were being used unlawfully.
He should have had a replacement key worker when his own went off sick. An entry recording that he self-harmed when angry should have been known to the officers on his unit, and his file reopened after the restraint. He should have been checked every 15 minutes after lock-down.
The officers believed they were acting lawfully. Nothing in their training told them otherwise.
What it teaches
Restraining a child is a psychological event as well as a physical one. The hold ended in minutes. The harm did not. A boy taken to the floor, hurt and left alone is at risk for hours, so assessment, observation and record must run on after the door closes.
The second lesson is about lawfulness. Staff can use a technique in good faith, as they were taught, and still be applying unlawful force. That gap belongs to the organisation that taught them, not to them.
Questions for the room
- The officers thought they were acting lawfully. What should have told them otherwise, and who owed them that information?
- A child has been restrained and left in his room. Who writes the observation plan for the next six hours?
- The inquest found an unlawful regime, not a rogue officer. What must a manager check for a technique to be lawful as well as taught?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: probable. Two independent reports, published the day and the day after, carry the verdict. The coroner’s inquisition was not obtained, so the finding is reported rather than read in the coroner’s own words.
The Article 2 finding rests on the vault record. No Strasbourg judgment text was read for this page.
The boy is not named here, and he is not named in any of our materials.
Our physical interventions training covers post-restraint observation and the assessment that continues after a hold.
Sources
- BBC News, 26 January 2011, “Unlawful force contributed to death of boy, 14, in cell”
- INQUEST and Prison Reform Trust, Fatally Flawed, 2012
Reviewed 20 October 2026.