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Positional and Restraint Asphyxia

  • Chapter
Sudden Deaths in Custody

Part of the book series: Forensic Science and Medicine ((FSM))

Abstract

The use of physical restraint to control violent, uncooperative, or combative individuals is to be expected in the law enforcement setting. Furthermore, the more violent, combative, or uncooperative an individual, the greater and greater degrees of force required to restrain such persons. When an individual dies under such circumstances, it becomes a legitimate question whether the restraint process or specific method itself had any causal relationship with the death or whether the death was predicated more upon the circumstances that led to restraint in the first place. Clearly, certain methods of restraint have been reported to be potentially harmful to individuals and as a result, certain “choke hold” maneuvers are no longer used by most police or law enforcement agencies because of the risk they apparently represent (1,2).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California, San Diego, CA

    Tom Neuman MD (Professor of Clinical Medicine)

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  1. Tom Neuman MD
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC

    Darrell L. Ross PhD

  2. Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California, San Diego, CA

    Theodore C. Chan MD

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© 2006 Humana Press Inc., Totowa, NJ

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Neuman, T. (2006). Positional and Restraint Asphyxia. In: Ross, D.L., Chan, T.C. (eds) Sudden Deaths in Custody. Forensic Science and Medicine. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-015-7_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-015-7_4

  • Publisher Name: Humana Press

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-58829-475-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-59745-015-7

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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