The Deaths in Custody Project was created by Professor Tamara Walsh at the University of Queensland, initially as a pro bono project. The project now runs as a clinical legal education clinic at Prisoners’ Legal Service (Qld).
The key aim of this project is to create a national database of all publicly accessible records of deaths in custody. Currently, coroners in each state and territory follow discrete legislation and each have their own websites on which they publish their inquests. Our database reports on deaths in custody from all jurisdictions, in one place, allowing for a comprehensive analysis of national trends and comparisons between jurisdictions.
Since 2016, a small group of UQ law students have volunteered their time to read and record information from all inquests made public since 1991. Our researchers read the relevant coroners’ reports in their entirety and synthesise the key information into a comprehensive, searchable dataset.
The website now has all findings released before 1 July 2024.
We acknowledge the distress and pain that individuals, families and communities suffer as a result of deaths in custody. We aim to approach this project with respect and compassion. To maintain privacy, we have anonymised our data.
This project adheres to university ethical review process guidelines and the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. If you would like to speak to someone about the project’s ethical obligations, you can contact Tamara Walsh, or if you would like to speak to an officer not involved in the project, you may contact the Ethics Coordinator on +61 7 3365 3924.
Project Leads
Professor Tamara Walsh
UQ Law School
+61 7 336 56192
t.walsh@law.uq.edu.au
View researcher profile
Angelene Counter, Prisoners' Legal Service (Qld)
Team Members
This project has been staffed by UQ law students since it was established in 2016. We are so thankful to all the students who have worked on the UQ/PLS Deaths in Custody Project. We particularly acknowledge the hard work and dedication of the student leaders who helped get this project off the ground: Louise Scarce (2016), Angelene Counter (2017-2018), Hannah Stadler and Eashwar Alagappan (2019-2020) and Lucy Cornwell (2021-2022).