Our selection process

The remember section of the website features 40 people who have died in state-related deaths since INQUEST was founded.

This selection of 40 people is a tiny sample of INQUEST's casework over a period of 40 years (1981-2021) and an even smaller sample of all the people who have died at the hands of the state. There are over 10,000 case folders on the organisational database, which includes a spectrum of INQUEST's casework, from monitoring deaths in custody to providing in-depth and long-standing support to individual families.   

The 40 people were carefully selected by an ethics steering group that was attached to the original Unlocking the Truth heritage project. The group was composed of bereaved families, INQUEST staff, lawyers, academics and board members, many of whom have been involved with the charity for decades. 

The 40 people represent a spread in terms of chronology, location, setting in which death occurred (e.g., prison, police, mental health), gender, race, social class, age, sexuality, religion, inquest outcome and campaign approaches.

INQUEST have also worked on mass fatalities such as Marchioness Disaster (1989), Hillsborough Football Disaster (1989) and Grenfell Tower Fire (2017). None of the people who tragically died in these disasters are featured in the remember section because INQUEST did not provide individual casework support.