What this is
The Independent Office for Police Conduct publishes an annual census of deaths during or following police contact. The 2023/24 edition, the twentieth in the series, was published on 17 October 2024 and covers 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024 across England and Wales.
It counts deaths and records the circumstances around them. In the same edition it records 32 road traffic fatalities, two fatal police shootings, 68 apparent suicides following custody, and 60 other deaths following contact that were independently investigated.
What it records
Of the 24 people who died in or following police custody, 14 had force used against them by officers or by members of the public, and all 14 were physically restrained. That is chapter 5, the custody deaths chapter.
Six of the 24 force incidents involved leg restraints: four leg restraints alone, one with a spit hood, and one with PAVA spray.
Of the 14 restrained, 13 were White and one was of mixed ethnicity.
The report states that restraint or other force did not necessarily contribute to the deaths.
How to read it
Fourteen counts presence, not cause. The figure says force was recorded in the majority of that year’s custody deaths. It does not say force killed anyone, and the IOPC says so itself in the same chapter.
The denominator also moves, and a reader has to pick one. The report’s trend table marks the 2023/24 custody total as revised to 25, while the body of the report publishes 24. The restrained count of 14 is unaffected by the revision. Cite the denominator you are using, and do not quietly swap between them.
What the chapter does not carry is everything a rate would need. There is no breakdown of hold, duration or position, no medical cause for any death, and no count of how many restraints police carried out in the year. Without that last number there is no incidence rate, only a count of deaths in which force appears. Leg restraints appearing in six of 24 force incidents is a shape, not a mechanism.
Where it stops
Fourteen of twenty-four is one year, one jurisdiction, one publisher. It covers England and Wales, and it covers deaths in or following custody, not deaths in the community or in health settings.
This page uses the 2023/24 figures only. It does not set them against the editions published before or after, because a proportion from one year does not describe another, and counts from different series do not add up.
It rests on a single publisher, which for a statutory statistical series is the data owner. No second, independent body corroborates the figure here. Quote it as the IOPC’s count for that year, not as an established total.
Sources
If you are reviewing how often force is used in your custody suite, and what is recorded after it, our restraint reduction training covers the recording, the review and the debrief.
Reviewed 20 October 2026.