Fancy a little trip in to some “French” caselaw? – of course, you do! – it’s actually European, human rights case law which just happens to be a French case but why quibble?!
I was pleased to be nudged towards this case by the estimable Inspector Jon Owen QPM after a short discussion about suicide risk and the “immediate risk to life” concept which is so important to discussions these days about police duties and responsibilities. There have been a number of cases before inquests in the last couple of years for us to wonder about how relevant a previous suicide attempt might be, when thinking about whether there is an immediate risk to life today.
And this is an apocryphal area of policing – all my service I heard people say a “death after contact” would be something where someone died within 48hrs after release from custody or following non-custody contact. I also heard people say it was “72hrs” or a week – but the truth is there has never been a specific timeframe. It has always been about whether there is thought to be a connection or a relevance between police action / inaction and someone’s death. The same idea works here: does the previous information mean we should still consider it relevant when assessing risk today.
TWO EXAMPLES
- Heather Findlay, in London – made a serious attempt on her own life and thankfully, was saved then “sectioned” under the Mental Health Act.
- After weeks in hospital she was granted escorted leave so she could go just beyond the hospital grounds with a healthcare assistant in order to smoke for 15-minutes – once authorised, this happened each morning and afternoon for 11 days without problem.
- On the 12th afternoon, she absconded from the healthcare assistant and at inquest, the issue came up about whether the hospital should have considered it an “immediate risk to life” situation.
- They told the court it was not, stating nothing specifically indicated suicide was likely as she absconded and it had been some time since the previous attempt, weeks before and there had been eleven days without problems.
- Charlotte Tetley, in Cheshire – found by British Transport Police sitting on a railway line, waiting for a train and removed to an Emergency Department, interestingly enough, not under s136 MHA and that was never really explained.
- She was taken to hospital, under precisely what legal condition we never really found out and officers left her with ED staff.
- She shortly afterwards left the department before treatment and Cheshire Police insisted it was not an immediate risk to life situation.
- She was subsequently found on a railway line, sadly having finished what she’d started when first encountered.
PROXIMITY
Now in both cases, the NHS and police organisations respectively argued these were not “immediate risk to life” situations and I’m going to have to read between the lines of Preventing Future Death reports a little bit, to suggest it was because the previous suicidality was not immediately prior to the point where it was being argued there was a breach of duty. If I’m wrong about that, I can only apologise and remind everyone we have to read between lines here because public documents rarely make this point explicit. If only UK Coroners produced a full, written report as Australian Coroners do – an argument for another day.
Heather had made a credible attempt on her own life prior to hospital admission and obviously, she wasn’t given escorted leave immediately after arrival, but an unspecified amount of weeks later. The inquest jury nevertheless found the circumstances of her absconding did amount to a situation where there was an “immediate risk to life”, notwithstanding the period of time which had passed during which we should remember she was either detained or under escort. When last at liberty, she had been suicidal and almost lost her life.
Charlotte was found suicidal on a railway line only hours after she left an Emergency Department without treatment and the PFD after her death tells us a police supervisor continued to decline police attendance to help look for her because she had not verbalised her intention to end her life as she left or just before. This is despite the hospital saying things like “immediate danger” in two different phone calls to the police, desperately flagging how badly they thought it might end if the police did not find her. They literally told the police they feared she may die.
RENOLDE
In the French case I opened with – Renolde v France (2009) – the question arose about a mentally ill man in prison after committing a serious assault. In prison he unsuccessfully attempted to end his life and but was successful eighteen days later, despite a level of supervision in the prison which was far greater than would be given to someone suicidal in the community after contact with the police. After his death, his sister brought a legal claim, amongst other things, for a violation of Article 2 and she won – it was also a claim about Article 3.
In the submissions to the court there was a question about whether a suicide attempt almost three weeks prior to death should have been taken more seriously, indicating an “immediate risk to life”. It’s obviously not the point that one aspect of a complex life and a difficult situation always determines one way or the other whether the IRTL obligations apply, but what this case is telling us is it can’t be correct to suggest that because a previous suicidal event was X amount of days ago, it must, by definition, be inherently irrelevant because of time passed.
In this case X=18 and it was still considered by the court to be directly relevant to the French prison system’s IRTL obligation, despite much more being known about the prisoner than would be known in a police 999 call. Assessing IRTL criteria is still a relatively straight-forward exercise, however difficult and sensitive the incidents and issues might be – it’s about applying the criteria set out in the “Rabone” case –
- Real and immediate risk
- Present and continuing risk
- Not a frivilous or fanciful risk
IMMINENCE AND PROBABILITY
You may recall, in Melanie Rabone’s case, the hospital who were being sued by her parents, argued that the “operational duty” to Melanie did not apply because her death was not believed to be “imminent”. This idea of imminence has been repeated by the police in various ways when training was rolled out in recent years but it’s not the right way to think about it. We even have Coroners cases now where this has been argued over and forces have ended up being criticised, some of them straight-forwardly admitting in court they got their assessment wrong.
The imminence of someone’s death is not the determining factor – it never was, yet we know training for call handlers has encouraged them to think whether suicidality is something which is “happening now, or about to”. It’s also not correct to think about IRTL obligations in terms of how probable someone’s suicide is. Despite the definition in the three bullet points, above, this does not mean that the operational duty exists only where someone’s suicide is thought more likely than not.
In Melanie’s case, she had been formally assessed in hospital as being anywhere from a 5-20% risk of suicide and the court was more than satisfied this was enough of a risk for it to be relevant to Article 2 and the ‘operational duty’.
CULTURE
I believe there is a really problematic, cultural difficulty emerging in front of us –
The sheer number of cases being highlighted, not just in inquests, where we seem to be seeing a near-complete denial of responsibility for things which are clearly police responsibilities and where the police are the only agency who could take protective action towards a vulnerable person is nothing short of stunning. I’ll be honest: I sit most days just fascinated to wonder what conversations are going on inside police forces, if any and a decision to release “how to prepare for an RCRP inquest” guidance is still something reverberating around my head.
On no other topic I’m aware of, has the police released guidance so obviously about reputation management after the fact. There are plenty of inquests coming in 2026/7 which will no doubt have to look at RCRP and the contribution it may have played to a fatal outcome so ‘preparing’ for it probably is a good idea.
30 completed inquests, 24 PFDs and 16 other deaths pending inquest or inquiry conclusion.
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.
I try to keep this blog up to date, but inevitably over time, amendments to the law as well as court rulings and other findings from inquests and complaints processes mean it is difficult to ensure all the articles and pages remain current. Please ensure you check all legal issues in particular and take appropriate professional advice where necessary.
Government legislation website – www.legislation.gov.uk
Mental Health Cop 