False imprisonment is one of the oldest civil wrongs in English law and one of the most commonly misunderstood. It does not require a prison, a cell, or any injury at all.

What counts as imprisonment

The wrong is the complete restraint of a person's liberty, without lawful authority, for any period however short. Being held in the back of a police vehicle counts. Being kept in a room and told you cannot leave counts. Being detained for twenty minutes after the lawful basis for holding you has ended counts.

It does not have to be total physical confinement, but the restraint does have to be complete rather than partial: if a reasonable route out was genuinely available to you and you knew of it, the restraint is not complete.

Detention that starts lawful and becomes unlawful

This is the pattern that produces the most claims and gets noticed the least. An arrest can be entirely lawful at the moment it is made and become unlawful later, because the authority to detain you is not open-ended. Detention has to be reviewed at the intervals PACE sets, by an officer of the required rank, and it must remain necessary throughout.

Where a review is missed, or where detention continues after the reason for it has fallen away, the detention from that point is without lawful authority even though the original arrest was sound.

How long you have to bring a claim

The free routes, before any claim

A complaint to the force costs nothing and does not stop you claiming later. If the force's answer does not stand up you can apply for a review, and across all forces reporting, 24.5% of completed reviews found the force's own outcome was not reasonable and proportionate.

The three routes, and what each one gets you.