Current Issues - 2005

April 2006

Justice in the Hands of Hoods - PoliceBeat Editorial

The Government ’s proposals as contained in its consultation document on Draft Guidelines for Community-based Restorative Justice Schemes (CRJs)greatly alarmed this Federation We were not alone and in the company of other political parties (with the notable exception of Sinn Fein)and other police association bodies we have rejected the proposals both in their timing and in their content.

What the Government has suggested would have left the input of the PSNI to these schemes so fragile and imprecise that the PSNI would have been studiously ignored by the schemes ’ controllers.

The Federation has pointed out the obvious:Northern Ireland is not a normal society.There is as yet no agreed form of self-governance; the communities are split physically with 90 per cent of social housing wholly composed of one side of the community or the other.This lack of integration cannot be ignored in examining the self-serving nature of the more dubious proponents of CRJs.

Politically,there is a struggle for constituency control,particularly for the working class republican/ nationalist and loyalist support in West and North Belfast.

The republican ethos – as was the nationalist until recently – is marked by its continued rejection of the criminal justice instruments of Northern Ireland.In the campaign of terrorism over the past 35 years which the IRA chose to see as a war,it was axiomatic for republicans that they would also reject the rule of law and any official person or body charged with seeing its enforcement.

The point being made here is that the Republican movement supports the introduction of a community-based restorative justice system because it is for them an alternative to giving due recognition to the Police Service of Northern Ireland.CRJs are a way not of complementing the justice options but of denying the PSNI full pursuit of their legitimate policing role.In assuring control of their areas espousal of CRJs suits the political agenda of Sinn Fein and the anti- civic agenda of the loyalist paramilitaries.

It is the Federation ’s firm view that the introduction of a community justice system,as presently envisaged,will lead to the institutionalism authority,of a parallel justice system,characterised by being outside civic control but run on behalf of paramilitaries by their existing and past members. The creation of these unaccountable schemes will isolate communities from access to normal justice and police processes to the detriment of long term political and social stability.Communities will be ruled by the fear of bully boys who will,in practice and with a misplaced legal authority be the law.

There is some evidence that the Government is beginning to absorb these points.Its best course of action – as with the On-the-Runs Bill – to withdraw the proposals for CRJs entirely.