UQ Law Students Daisy Rice and Marnie Ball spent two years investigating the situational and systemic factors associated with prone restraint deaths in custody using the Deaths in Custody database.
In 2026, their research article, titled ‘The use and abuse of prone restraint in Australian deaths in custody’, was published in the Current Issues in Criminal Justice journal.
They identified 42 deaths in custody in Australia where prone restraint was implicated.
They found that Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples in custody are more likely to be held in the prone restraint position for longer periods of time than non-Indigenous people prior to their death. Considering the underreporting of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander status in coronial reports, this finding may be even more significant than the results suggest.
Other key findings include:
· 69% of the deceased people were suffering from a mental illness at the time of their death;
· 66.7% were under the influence of an illicit substance; and
· 26.2% were identified as being obese.
Significantly, prone restraint was nearly always used in conjunction with other restraint methods, such as handcuffs (95.2%), capsicum spray (28.6%) and less commonly, tasers (11.9%).
Whilst restraint was determined to be a contributing factor in most of the inquests (69%), it was also deemed reasonable in most cases (57.1%).
The full article, which also includes a literature review and discussion of the key findings, can be accessed here.