Following Minnesota’s passing of legislation restricting the concept of “excited delirium,” a term describing a supposed condition that leads to death in police custody, The Marshall Project explores what the term is and how it is employed in their Closing Argument newsletter. Research by CPE is cited in the newsletter article, and principal research scientist Justin Feldman explains the findings further:
According to an analysis published this week by the Center for Policing Equity, excited or agitated delirium is mentioned in about 17% of official “cause-of-death statements” after someone dies following police use of force, when that force is not a gun. The think tank, founded in 2008, works on issues of racial disparities in policing.
Justin Feldman, one of the researchers who conducted the study, told me that holding police accountable for deaths in custody goes beyond the problems with the concept of excited delirium. He’s skeptical that efforts to ban the term will have a meaningful impact. “It is very easy to come up with another explanation” that also excludes police use of force as a cause of death, Feldman said. That could mean using a synonym for excited delirium or citing other non-police causes of death, like drug use.
Read the full newsletter article on The Marshall Project’s website.