Thesis Title:
Delirium, Disorder, Disturbance: Racialisation, Mental Health and Policing in the UK
Thesis Abstract:
According to the UK’s police watchdog, in 2023/4, people with mental health concerns accounted for 79% of deaths in police custody. Between 2012 and 2020, a third of deaths in police custody followed physical restraint, and those racialised as Black were seven times more likely to be killed. The UK’s racially differential and discriminatory restraint practices have received censure from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the European Committee on the Prevention of Torture.
However, progress in research and policy has been long undermined by the continued use of the terms ‘Excited Delirium’, a racist pseudo-diagnosis born in the US, and its UK successor, Acute Behavioural Disturbance (ABD). Both terms have been said to pathologize victims, hinder examination of restraint practices, and legitimise use of force. As one survivor reflected, ‘the only physical harm I experienced following a mental health crisis came from being restrained inappropriately. Distress doesn’t kill, but the response to it can’.
Police killings of racialised people in mental health crises constitutes an urgent human rights issue that demands thoughtful investigation. This project therefore aims to: utilise the sensibility of counter-forensics to interrogate the use of the ABD label and to prototype operative methodologies towards the effective examination of restraint-related deaths.
Primary Supervisor:
Dr Adam Elliot-Cooper