Coroners, courts, regulators and inspectors have recorded what restraint does to the people it is used on. This casebook publishes those records as short, sourced case pages: what happened, what went wrong, and what it means for the people running the service.
Every entry states its confidence, what could not be verified, and where the source runs out. Where a case is still live, we hold it. Where a name cannot be justified, we do not print it. Publications are labelled as publications, because a national count is not an incident.
147 case entries and 47 publications.
A two-bed children’s home where restraint was not written down
Ofsted rated a private children's home inadequate in every area and found staff did not record all the restraints they used.
An arm across the throat, recorded as a training issue
A government restraint report recorded a child losing consciousness during a head hold at a secure training centre, and the board that reviewed it treated the hold as…
Eight things a school had to prove after an inspection
A residential special school was told that no child should be restrained unless it was the only practicable way to keep them safe, and given a list of…
PublicationFive of seventeen custody deaths followed restraint, and the number moves every year
The IOPC recorded 17 deaths in or following police custody for 2024/25, five of them in incidents where the person was physically restrained, against 14 of 24 the…
Handcuffed on a stretcher in a moving ambulance
An 84-year-old man with Alzheimer's disease slipped out of his stretcher straps, so staff called the police. The coroner said the decision to handcuff him beggared belief.
PublicationOne recorded restrictive practice every twelve minutes
Two charities analysed two and a half years of mandatory restrictive practice reporting, found one recorded use every twelve minutes, and called their own total a floor rather…
PublicationPain was used where the policy never allowed it
Charlie Taylor's 2020 review of the youth secure estate found pain-inducing techniques used in circumstances the policy did not intend, and declined to recommend a ban.
Pinned face down in an aircraft aisle during a removal
A torture survivor was held face down and subjected to a pain technique outside the approved manual by five escort officers. A High Court judge found serious assault…
Restrained in the street and in the ambulance, dead the same day
A man in a drug-related crisis was restrained on the ground with a knee on him, then strapped to a stretcher for the journey to hospital, and a…
Restrained on his first night back, then not checked
A 59-year-old prisoner was restrained hours after returning to a closed prison. The first-night checks that should have followed never happened.
Restrained, carried to a cell, and left without anyone watching
An autistic woman on remand was restrained and carried to her cell, then left alone with her observations unchanged. She died three days later.
Strapped into a school chair that nobody assessed
A five-year-old autistic pupil who could walk unaided was placed in a specialist chair with a lap belt at mealtimes, and an ombudsman found he was restrained unnecessarily.
PublicationThe count of 1,983 deaths that cannot show restraint
According to INQUEST, 1,983 people have died in and following police contact in England and Wales since 1990, and restraint is not one of the things its table…
A nurse knelt on a resident’s thigh and told him he could not hit him
He was struck off five years later, and the resident had no injuries at all.
Driven to his ward on the floor of a caged van
A detained mental health patient with an uncleared spinal injury was taken to his ward lying on the floor of a secure van, and died a month later.
Handcuffed to an officer for five hours while his heart failed
An 84-year-old man with dementia, declared unfit for detention and unfit to fly, died in hospital still chained to a custody officer.
PublicationRestraint is allowed, but only after everything else has failed
Ofsted's July 2025 statement on restrictive practice sets a test for children's homes and schools, and attaches no enforcement to it.
The restraint allegations that were not proved
A nurse was struck off, but not for restraint. Every restraint particular against him failed, and the case is worth reading for that reason alone.
PublicationThe review that treated a closed ward as a system failure
Durham's safeguarding adults review of Whorlton Hall made seven findings, every one of them about the system around the ward and none about the staff inside it.
Nine pain-inducing restraints, and a panel that rejected all nine
Inspectors found pain-inducing techniques used on children nine times in a year, every one judged inappropriate, and a girl stripped by an all-male team twice.
The door stayed shut for seventeen minutes
A prisoner had a seizure in a transport van and was left in the cell, slumped, while the crew waited outside.
A chokehold held for six minutes after he stopped fighting
A 29-year-old with paranoid schizophrenia was held in a neck restraint outside a pub and died eight days later. The jury found he was unlawfully killed.
A paramedic held a patient’s face during a transfer and threatened her
The tribunal called the restraint unnecessary. It lasted twelve minutes, and he wrote nothing about it.
A seclusion record filled in afterwards
A nurse wrote up a seclusion pack after the seclusion had started, left the patient unobserved, and at another employer kept pushing a patient's feet to the floor…
PublicationEleven people restrained by police who were never taken into custody
The IOPC counted 63 other deaths after police contact in 2025/26. Twelve of the dead had force used on them, eleven were restrained by officers, and none of…
Face down on a bedroom floor, with a nurse in charge watching
A senior nurse held a patient's head face down on a bed while colleagues held her by the neck, then threw a cup of liquid over her and…
Handcuffed face down on a respiratory ward, dead moments later
A 57-year-old man with lung cancer and pneumonia was cuffed face down on the floor by police. The jury found the restraint contributed to his death.
Held face down on a grass bank for over an hour, waiting for an ambulance
He told officers he was frightened he would die. The inquest found serious failures in the methods of restraint.
Neither used the force that injured him. Both were convicted.
Two former nurses were convicted over the ill-treatment of a patient with severe learning disabilities. One failed to intervene; the other falsified the record.
Nightdresses tied in a knot to stop residents reaching their pads
A care home manager's staff tied residents' nightclothes between the legs, and she was struck off after saying she saw nothing wrong with it.