INQUEST

• INQUEST is a pressure group that focuses on state-related deaths like those in police custody, prisons, immigration detention centres and psychiatric care
• INQUEST campaigns to ensure that investigations into deaths treat people with dignity and respect.
• INQUEST looks at:

  • Case work
  • Changing policies
  • Accountability
• Case work - carry out specialist case work to support bereaved people so they can establish the truth about a death that has occurred 
• Accountability - aim to ensure that state institutions are held accountable when they fail to safeguard those in their care
• Changing policies - INQUEST aims to spread the lessons learnt from investigations in order to prevent further deaths
• Examples of successful campaigns by INQUEST:

  • Setting up the Independent Police Claims Commission
  • Extending the 2007 Corporate Manslaughter Act to cover deaths in the custody of public authorities
• INQUEST funds bereaved parents, the legal costs 
• A ‘Hillsborough law ‘ - INQUEST helped to make it a crime for senior police officers to cover up institutional and individual failures