Official data show black people are seven times more likely to die at the hands of UK police

Inquest Charitable Trust, a charity concerned with state-related deaths in England and Wales, published that black people are seven times more likely to die than white people after being restrained by the police in new figures previously obscured by the government. Their report called "I Can't Breathe: Race, Death and British Policing" features new data and analysis, and powerful interviews with expert human rights lawyers.

Inquest reports that their investigations unearthed the British system's failure in investigating deaths after police contact continued to fail black families as racism was always ignored as a potential factor relevant to the victims' deaths.

The report says that no officer had ever been found to have acted in a racist or discriminatory way that resulted in the death of a black person after police made contact with them. In 2021, the government claimed that there was no evidence showing black people were dying at a higher rate than other races, but the new analysis revealed the actual figure of black deaths to be seven times higher than for whites.

A key part of the Inquest report states "From 2012/13 to 2020/21, there have been 119 deaths involving restraint recorded by the IOPC [Independent Office for Police Conduct] 'in or following police custody' or recorded as 'other deaths following police contact."

It continued saying that, "of these 23 were of Black people, 86 were White, five were Asian and four were mixed race. Assuming constant demographic profiles over the period considered, Black people are 6.4 times more likely to die than the proportion of the population they represent. For white people, the comparable figure is just 0.84."

Inquest's executive director, Deborah Coles released a statement saying, "For too long, the government and IOPC have ignored the extent of racial disproportionality in deaths in their own official data and failed to publish these stark figures. They have chosen to focus on a limited dataset, which obscures the reality of Black people. This has excluded numerous contentious and high-profile cases from the official statistics."