Deaths in German police custody.

Background: According to the ministries of the interior of all German federal states, a total of 128 persons died in police custody between 1993 and 2003.

Methods: An inquiry to the forensic university institutes and regional court doctors showed that, within this period, post mortems were conducted in 75 of these cases. We were able to include 60 of these 75 cases in our evaluation and deficiency analysis, which were carried out under assessment of the post mortem records and partly by making use of the subsequent medical expert reports and the results of criminal investigation.

Results: The most frequent cause of death was acute alcoholic intoxication, followed by cerebrocranial traumata, internal diseases and fatal poisonings with medical or illegal drugs. In 23 cases, the person taken into custody had been seen by a physician in order to determine the person's fitness for detention in custody. Of these 23 cases, 15 (65.2%) revealed deficiencies in various areas of medical activity. Police officers had made mistakes in 33 of the 60 cases (55.0%), mainly because they failed to seek medical assistance or did not monitor the person with sufficient frequency. Our retrospective study however showed that in 16 cases (26.6%) death was very probably not preventable even if the person had received all necessary care.

Conclusions: Our study gives recommendations on how to improve various measures to increase the quality of medical attention given to persons taken into police custody.