How are neurodivergent people treated in police custody?

Detention in police custody is no picnic for anyone. Neurodivergent people (those whose way of communicating, processing, perceiving, moving, and interacting, diverges from what might be considered ‘typical’, including autistic people and people with ADHD, dyslexia, Tourette’s, acquired brain injury and learning disabilities) can suffer more than most.

The police can ease this distress through simple measures: talking to neurodivergent people, understanding what they need, and actively offering activities to help them self-regulate and feel less anxious.

But new research from Louise Finer reveals significant gaps in how officers identify, understand and respond to neurodivergent people’s needs. Her research examined the treatment of 43 neurodivergent people in Met Police custody, drawing on the reports of independent custody visitors (trained volunteers who visit police custody suites to check on the welfare and treatment of the people detained there), interviews with custody staff and custody records.

She found a custody workforce largely unequipped to identify neurodivergent people or their needs: “Few staff showed awareness of the significant challenges that individuals with learning disabilities might have, or that a person’s needs might be more acute due to the custody context or change over time, or that masking or compliant responses might hide significant vulnerabilities.”

11 of the 43 neurodivergent people identified by custody visitors had not been identified in police custody records.

The police rely heavily on custody risk assessments to identify neurodivergence, welfare and communication needs. But both police and the people they detain find them lengthy and difficult to navigate, particularly when stress levels are high. Some officers described running through questions like a checklist, while people may not disclose a diagnosis because they fear discrimination or do not realise it is relevant.

Even when needs are identified, meaningful support does not necessarily follow. As Louise Finer notes, “asking individuals about their needs during the booking-in process [when the person arrives at custody after arrest] is not the same as providing a guarantee that these needs will be met.”

Custody staff did not respond to formal diagnoses consistently or meaningfully. Some people detained in police custody struggled to access medication, healthcare, exercise or simple distractions.

This isn’t just about basic comfort while detained by the state. Without appropriate support, people may struggle to understand their rights, participate fairly in legal processes or make informed decisions. Misunderstandings can escalate, health can deteriorate and opportunities to divert people from the criminal justice system can be missed. Only 5 of the 43 people in the study were referred to liaison and diversion services, which could have connected them with support outside the criminal justice system.

Why aren’t things better? Staff said time and staff shortages prevented them from providing the support they knew was needed: “At the moment we’re doing the bare minimum. We’re doing the bare minimum in accordance with PACE. I think there’s a lot more we could do.”

Staff recognised the shortcomings and wanted better training, describing current provision as “woeful” and “crap”. They also criticised tokenism from senior managers: “I mean the answer to everything at the moment is give them a foam football, you know that’s our plan to deal with neurodivergence. But sometimes it’s just going down there and chatting.”

Louise Finer calls for several improvements, including a better screening process so that custody staff identify neurodivergent people and the support they need more accurately. But she emphasises that more and better screening alone isn’t the answer: even when people disclosed a formal diagnosis, “it did not necessarily lead to identification of needs or provision of support.”

She recommends mandatory, practical neurodiversity training for custody staff. But the report is clear that training alone is insufficient without understanding why support is necessary and what it looks like. Custody records (which log the details of each detention) should capture individual support needs, triggers and effective approaches, with information shared between shifts. Staff must also have time and resources to check in with detained people and proactively offer exercise and activities.

The criminal justice system has taken steps to improve its support for neurodivergent people over the last five years, since a joint inspectorate report in 2021 exposed the scale of the issue. But a fair criminal justice system must do more than identify needs: it must respond to them.