Southport

I was taken by surprise today, to learn the “phase one” report from the Southport Inquiry was published.  I came out of a work meeting having actually mentioned Southport to find it was all over the news so in I piled, only to find it is over 750-pages long!  Quite the reading task, especially if I’m to use those horrible events and the multi-agency failings now flagged explicitly by Sir Adrian Fulford in his findings.

• The Southport Inquiry, phase one report, volume one.

• The Southport Inquiry, phase one report, volume two.

You will have fathomed for yourself I haven’t yet read over 750-pages but I did think it was worth making two particular points –

• Findings around the assumptions made that AR’s autism spectrum disorder somehow “excused” his offending behaviours and influenced decisions away from arrest and / or prosecution.

• Mention of the Right Care, Right Person program in its own little section of volume 2 of the report, in paragraphs 115-118.

ARREST AND PROSECUTION

Bearing in mind we had many occasions over the last few weeks to think about arrest and / or prosecution decisions in the context of the Nottingham Inquiry, the Southport report is formally concluding around similar kinds of concerns.

In this case, the findings are that AR’s condition overshadowed considerations around his offending and risk behaviour. One of the main findings of the report is that he should have been arrested for possession of a knife and if he had been, the finding is his house would have been searched and other materials of concern found. This is one part of the report I had questions about because it is not usual to search someone’s house after arresting them for possession of a knife, but the point being made about considerations of mental health conditions overshadowing criminal justice systems and nudging them away form the CJS are valid.

That said, we have to remember AR was a child at the time of his contacts with various agencies and one aspect of youth justice strategies is to try and prevent children entering the CJS unnecessary – but the report puts pay to that idea, quite rightly, because of the risks which were known, knowable and made known.

I’ll return to this topic in another post in more detail, once I’ve read the full report but it already has so many echoes of other inquests, inquiries and investigations from the past.  “When do we prosecute a vulnerable person for a criminal offence rather than divert them?” is perhaps the most interesting public policy question I’ve ever come across and nothing in law or guidance gives us an easy answer.

We’ll come back to this!

RIGHT CARE, RIGHT PERSON

Most of you who regularly read this website will know my PhD research is directly focussed on deaths where RCRP may have played some kind of role and I’ve been monitoring this inquiry for a while because evidence by a Lancashire Police call handler was flagged on the day it was heard and RCRP highlighted.  It never seemed likely that particular call to the police was handled in a way which had any direct bearing on the outcome and that’s certainly not what Sir Adrian has found in his report; but my research is not (just) about identifying where there may have been a death as a consequence of RCRP decision-making but where inquest or inquiry after a death is telling us something about the scheme which is worth knowing.

And which, quite frankly, was both known and knowable as the scheme was being designed and rolled out without evaluation.

I think Sir Adrian Fulford is very measure in the way he writes up the four paragraphs which deal with a call from AR’s school to the police, for assistance in conducting a “welfare check”.  I think his words are very carefully and precisely chosen – you wouldn’t expect it to be otherwise from a retired High Court judge – and it also seems obvious we need to read between the lines but no doubt, you’ll form your own view about that in just a moment.

PARAGRAPHS 115-118

You’ll have to excuse me for this lengthy extract, but it does save you opening the report and finding the excerpt.  This section about “Presfield High School’s request for a welfare check in March 2023” is produced in full.  This is partly so I’m not accused of being selective in quoting it when I go on to tell you what I think is being said here –

115 – “On 21 March 2023, Presfield High School called Lancashire Constabulary’s – Force Control Room to ask officers to conduct a welfare check on AR, whom they had not seen since May 2022, and whom no professional had seen since a CAMHS visit in January 2023. Their attempts to gain access to the address had been rebuffed by AR’s parents.”

116 – “Applying what is known as a Right Care, Right Person (RCRP) policy – a national-level initiative in England and Wales, introduced by Lancashire Constabulary in January 2022 – a call handler within the Force Control Room, Mr Robert Correy, determined that this was not an appropriate call for the police to attend. He concluded that no crime had been or was being committed, and there was no immediate risk to life. Based on the policy that was in place at the time, I agree that this was not an appropriate case for police officers to be deployed to the home address as a result of AR’s non-attendance at school.”

117 – “However, Mr Correy did not take AR’s name or age, or any other identifying details. He could not therefore carry out any sort of research into previous incidents involving AR or make a fully informed assessment of whether this was in fact an appropriate case for police deployment. While he reached the right conclusion, that did not reflect a careful and properly informed exercise of professional judgement. Mr Correy could and should have gathered more information before reaching that conclusion. While Lancashire Constabulary identified this after the attack, Mr Correy was initially resistant to feedback on the approach taken under the RCRP policy. It was only in his evidence to the Inquiry that Mr Correy accepted that he ought to have approached the call differently. That was in part due to the fact that discrepancies between the RCRP policy and the material within the script which call handlers have to follow in the Force Control Room were brought to light in the course of the Inquiry.”

118 – “Lancashire Constabulary have conducted audit and quality assurance work on other calls from 21-22 March 2023 where control room staff applied RCRP. That work indicates that information such as names and dates of birth was routinely obtained, appropriate checks took place, and signposting to relevant other services carried out. I also note that from 6 October 2025 the Lancashire Constabulary RCRP question set which call handlers follow was changed, so that the first question was to obtain the person’s name and date of birth. In the light of this work, I accept that Mr Correy’s handling of the call about AR on 21 March 2023 was not representative of how RCRP is typically operated by Lancashire Constabulary. I am, however, mindful that RCRP is a policy which, if not carefully and properly implemented, risks police failing to attend incidents which they ought to attend. While Mr Correy reached the correct outcome in this case despite the failings in how the call was handled, that would not necessarily be so in other similar cases. Although I am reassured by the evidence of how Lancashire Constabulary more typically handles RCRP calls, this incident should be a reminder to the Constabulary, and to other forces adopting RCRP, that it is an approach which requires high levels of care in design and policy drafting, thorough and effective training, and a high degree of supervision if it is to be relied upon.”

BETWEEN THE LINES

• Paragraph 116 –
• “Based on the policy that was in place at the time, I agree that this was not an appropriate case for police officers to be deployed to the home address as a result of AR’s non-attendance at school…”

• This is clearly hinting at the reality the policy was in place for “welfare check” requests and that it may not necessarily be the policy we need.  Hold that thought, because we’ll come back to it.

• Paragraph 117 –
• “Mr Correy did not take AR’s name or age, or any other identifying details. He could not therefore carry out any sort of research into previous incidents involving AR or make a fully informed assessment of whether this was in fact an appropriate case for police deployment.”

• It has been said a number of times before and not just by me: the RCRP “threshold” is a partial explanation of what the police are responsible for and thresholds for acting under the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Children Act 1989 are both lower than the proclaimed threshold for police involvement.  I said that from the start.

• “While he reached the right conclusion, that did not reflect a careful and properly informed exercise of professional judgement.”

• Is it fair to wonder whether Mr Correy was following a script or flowchart which has been provided to control rooms to administer RCRP where, we might imagine, people stop being professinoally curious because they are assuming the flowchart author has considered all of the various legal, practical, information and other variables to draw a flowchart or script a process which takes account of all the foreseeable complexity, including for rare events which are always what inquiries and inquests end up looking at? – probably.

• Paragraph 118 –
• “While Mr Correy reached the correct outcome in this case despite the failings in how the call was handled, that would not necessarily be so in other similar cases.”

• This is significant – we know of the endless complexity of the kinds of things which are wrapped up in policing & mental health. Professor Jill Peay suggested it was the “most complicated” work done by professionals in public agencies and we know all situations turn on their own merits. It was never likely that a blunt threshold tool (which I’ve reminded you is partial) was ever going to take account of that complexity and Sir Adrian is suggesting this is true in this case.

• “That was in part due to the fact that discrepancies between the RCRP policy and the material within the script which call handlers have to follow in the Force Control Room were brought to light in the course of the Inquiry.”

• Well, well, well – weren’t training issues highlighted as one of the problems with RCRP? I don’t know how much training Lancashire gave their call-handlers but I do know it was as little as 45-minutes in some forces.  Basicaly, “follow the flowchart.”

I could keep going – which I know you know!  Sorry about that, because I am genuinely trying hard NOT to bang on about this.  But I was worried about this programme from the start and whilst today’s report is not suggesting any kind of link between RCRP and the awful outcomes in Southport some months later, it is offering us a public inquiry chair making it plain it could easily do so, if calls are not handled with sufficient care and diligence and he seems to be hinting that whilst Mr Correy followed the procedure correctly, the procedure itself is flawed and could contribute to a serious untoward outcome.

And of course, we know it already has – 21 PFD notices so far and many of them involving under-responsiveness to identified risk – something which the Southport Inquiry also flags up.  Linking together the two issues I wanted to highlight, they are potentially connected aren’t they.  We’re seeing what I might call “diagnostic overshadowing” of criminal and risky conduct because of (perceived) “mental health” issues (in this case, ASD).  Crime being rebadged as mental health, as if those are two neat and distinct categories.

Conscious of the length of this post so I’ll stop!  But only for a while, because there is so much more in this and no doubt when Nottingham finally reports, there will be something to say about how similar the findings are.

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Awarded the President’s Medal, by
the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Winner of the Mind Digital Media Award

 

All opinions expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation.
(c) Michael Brown, 2026
I am not a police officer.

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