A few years back I wrote a piece for The Big Issue in the North on a film about deaths in custody called Injustice.
The film achieved most of its publicity not because of the shocking facts in it (that hundreds of people have died in custody and no-one has ever been successfully prosecuted) but that the Police Federation's heavy handed lawyers tried to get it banned (thus breaking rule 1 in the PR handbook).
Today there will be a march to Downing Street to remember the 2,533 people known to have died in custody since 1969. There will also be a press conference involving the TUC and United Friends and Families Campaign.
Road campaigners usually say that if all the deaths on our roads took place on one day then people would really sit up and take notice and do something about it.
That figure of 2,533 is only a couple hundred short of the number of people killed in the 9/11 attacks. Meanwhile there are 1,600 names on the UK police memorial to officers killed in the line of duty and they go back to 1680.
It's not a case that some people are less deserving of remembrance or that a police officer killed stopping a robbery is of more value than a person who chose September 11 to visit the Twin Towers.
But neither should it be true that just because you end up in custody (wether in a police station, prison or mental institution) you forfeit any rights to life.
Just as we should rightfully honour those police officers and the people killed in 9/11 and bring to book the people responsible - so we should do the same for those in the state's custody. It is the most vulnerable who require the greatest care but who make up a significant proportion of those 2,533.
The fact that 2,533 people can die and barely anything is said about it, no-one is accountable and we're not even sure if that is the final total is, frankly, shameful.
Comments