People in police custody say they are denied medication by police and nurses

People in police custody say they are being denied medication for their health problems by police and nurses, new research says.

Dr. Stephanie Mulrine interviewed 42 people with physical or mental health problems and who had been arrested for alleged minor offenses.

Dr. Mulrine, of Newcastle University, recruited the 36 men and six women through charities and peer support groups for the homeless, substance users or people with mental health issues in two areas in England.

She told the British Sociological Association’s medical sociology conference at the University of Warwick, on September 13, 2024, that most of those who took medication said they had been denied it, despite asking for it.

The medication denied included not just opioid replacements such as methadone but also cancer drugs, insulin for diabetes and medications for mental health conditions.

One man said he admitted to a crime he had not committed just to get to prison where he could receive methadone, Dr. Mulrine said.

The man told her: “They say to me, ‘Just get your interview out of the way, and we’ll get you out and get your meth.’ I’ve admitted to things that I haven’t done just to get out of there, to get my meth, to get to jail. I’ve got these things on my record now and I’m thinking, ‘I haven’t even done that,’ and it just looks worse every time I go to court.”

Another man told Dr. Mulrine, “The health care in there is absolutely hopeless. You get arrested and you’re detained for 12 hours and you’re in a cell sick because the health care won’t help you.

“They won’t give you methadone, let alone phone up the chemist and ask if this guy is on a script and if he is taking his methadone. They don’t provide you with anything like that, so they make you suffer in a cell, sweating, being sick, diarrhea, and you just want to end your life.

“There were certain times when I’ve been detained in custody when I’ve been clucking, I’ve been absolutely sick, because I haven’t had my methadone. All the health care do is give you a paracetamol, which isn’t even touching the sides.”

One man told her: “It’s a quicker route to go to prison and get some methadone. So they dangle the carrot [saying] ‘prison’s all right, you know … they give you methadone.'”

Another man highlighted the impact upon release into the community: “You’re let out and you’ve missed your script, you’ve missed your dose for that day. So you’re getting out and committing more crime to actually make yourself feel better. Then you’re scoring illegal drugs because the custody haven’t given your methadone, they’ve let you out at 7 o’clock, so you can’t do that. You explain it to them and they don’t really care, like they’ve heard it a million times.”

One man with mental health issues said he had been denied medication: “I was so unstable mentally that I could have been coerced into saying anything.”

Dr. Mulrine told the conference: “Rather troublingly, the accounts of those I interviewed suggested that their access to treatment is mediated by stigma and distrust. While guidelines outline that there should be access to medications, in practice this is not happening, which leads to those detained in police custody suffering and being put at risk of harm in police custody or upon release.

“People were able to request to see a health care professional, usually a nurse provided by a private company that operate in that police custody suite, but interactions with health care professionals did not routinely lead to access to medications.

“Appeals for access to medication, particularly opioid replacement medication, are met with distrust, as detainees are viewed as not believable.

“This could lead to them suffering from withdrawal symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhea, leading them to make decisions to hasten their release or go sent to prison, such as confessing to crimes that they are not guilty of. Upon release we are seeing that the denial of medication can jeopardize those following rehabilitative programs and feed a cycle of criminality.”

She said that denying opioid replacements in police custody goes against policy guidelines as outlined by the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine.