Press Release: The Faculty of Forensic & Legal Medicine (FFLM) of the Royal College of Physicians Responds to The Equivalence in Police Custody Healthcare Report
London, 23/4/2025: Experts welcome the focus being brought upon the dire state of healthcare in police custody in a statement published today by the Faculty of Forensic & Legal Medicine (FFLM).
Despite the availability for many years of clear guidance and recommendations on quality standards, including management of medication and supporting detainees in withdrawal, healthcare in police custody continues to risk both patient safety and criminal justice outcomes.
Services are not commissioned in line with national guidelines and recognised quality standards. Even where procurement has been to the relevant standard, there may be an apathetic attitude towards maintaining quality.
Many of the recommendations made by the equivalence report would already have been addressed if FFLM quality standards and guidance were adhered to.
The response calls upon police forces to fully incorporate FFLM standards into police custody healthcare both when commissioning and following procurement. Police and Crime Commissioners must ensure that their procurement departments hold providers to account when quality standards are not met. The FFLM also calls for full implementation of the recommendations of the Angiolini Report of 2017.
The FFLM President, Dr Bernadette Butler said “This report resonates fully with the reason for the existence of the FFLM, which is to raise standards in forensic & legal medicine, and protect vulnerable people. It reinforces the need for forensic & legal medicine to be a recognised specialty in the United Kingdom.”
Notes to editors:
The FFLM was founded to achieve the following objectives:
- To promote for the public benefit the advancement of education and knowledge in the field
- of forensic and legal medicine.
- To develop and maintain for the public benefit the good practice of forensic and legal
- medicine by ensuring the highest professional standards of competence and ethical integrity.
And the FFLM would exercise its powers:
- To establish a training pathway in forensic and legal medicine and achieve specialist recognition of the specialty.
- To act as an authoritative body for the purpose of consultation in matters of educational or public interest concerning forensic and legal medicine.
Additionally in March 2009, regarding standards in custodial healthcare, the Home Secretary stated: ‘Guidance as to the level of professional and clinical qualification required for doctors or nurses is issued by the Faculty … Responsibility for recruitment of healthcare professionals is a matter for individual chief police officers, and it is for each police force to make a decision on an individual basis against this guidance ‘.
References
- Hon Dame Elish Angiolini DBE QC’s Independent Review of Deaths and Serious Incidents in Police Custody, first published in December 2017.
- Equivalence in Police Custody report
- FFLM statement here
For further information, please contact: Forensic.medicine@fflm.ac.uk