Deaths in Prison Custody in Scotland 2012-2022

3. Data sources and definitions

The analysis in this report is based on the data published by the SPS on deaths in prison custody. As part of SPS’s legal obligations under the SPS Publication Scheme, it publishes information regarding all deaths in prison custody. SPS have published information on those who have died in prison custody since 2012. This information is updated on a quarterly basis.

Deaths in custody in this report conforms to the definition applied by the SPS on their website. This definition encompasses anyone who was resident in a prison in Scotland at the time of their death, even where their death occurred in a hospital or hospice. It therefore excludes people who may have died whilst on Home Detention Curfew or any other conditional release from prison.

Following a death in custody, prison establishments complete a Significant Incident Report to alert SPS Headquarters that a death in prison custody has occurred. This report includes an incident description to the apparent cause of death. The Headquarters’ health team then submit a request to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) for the Medical Certificate Cause of Death (MCCD) and the final post-mortem. Upon receipt of these, the apparent cause of death initially recorded by SPS on their website may change following confirmation of the cause of death in the MCCD or post-mortem^[2].

To allow for comparison of cause of death in custody over time in this report, we have applied the three high level published causes of death as categorised by SPS analysts – which are i) deaths due to poisonings, ii) deaths due to intentional self-harm and iii) deaths by ‘all other’ causes which include deaths due to disease, illness, natural causes and homicide. Further detail on what is encompassed in these broad categories is provided later in the section covering causes of death.

It should be noted that the cause of death categorisation applied here by SPS analysts is broad and will not match the coding process applied by the National Records of Scotland (NRS) in their official statistics of deaths in the wider Scottish population. Therefore, to enhance our understanding of how deaths in prison custody compare to the general population, further analyses led by NRS are planned. This will consider causes of death in prison custody in greater detail, including providing comparisons of these to causes of death and trends in the general population. The NRS categorisation of deaths will follow that applied in their official population statistics which is based on the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision (ICD-10), so may differ from what is reported here.

Finally, to place deaths in prison custody in the context of the prison population as a whole, including estimating death rates per 1,000 population, the official national statistics on the Scottish prison population are drawn on.