Conclusion
These proposals represent part of a much larger agenda for policing reform. Critically, it is now time in Northern Ireland, as it was in South Africa, for all sides to start “thinking the unthinkable” if the peace process is to gain momentum. In that process of creating an agenda, opinions will be sought from many quarters. South Africa, in certain limited ways, provides a model of how irreconcilable views about the nature of policing a divided society, can be given serious considerations, of a more peaceful society is to be created. But there is one other crucial lesson from South Africa. Police reform cannot be imposed from above, or according to the dictates of outside experts. It must be based on serious, continuing consultation between all parties — local communities, political parties, the central state, and the police service itself. The South African example demonstrates that existing hostile interests do not have to learn to love one another in making progress in police reform. There is a common interest which surmounts political opposition — local people need the security which an effective, non-partisan police service can provide. minuscule levels.
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Principally, on the Republican side, the Provisional I.R.A. (PIRA), and on the Loyalist side, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), and Ulster Freedom Force (UFF).
The recent publication ofFrameworks for the Future, the consultative document issued from Westminster in February, 1995, avoids any discussion of the future character of the RUC.
The Work of the Police Authority 1991–1994, Police Authority for Northern Ireland, Belfast, 1994.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has stated — 8 November 1994 — that the RUC is not part of the reform agenda. The Social Democratic and Labour Party has made tentative statements regarding a possible proposal for a number ofregional police forces in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein and both Nationalist and Loyalist para-militaries have articulated the need for a new policing policy but none has yet been forthcoming from their ranks. There has been silence from the mainstream Unionist political parties.
Kevin Boyle and Tom Hadden have discussed the possibility of similar structures to the one proposed here and have documented historical Irish precedents for new local community policing structures for Northern Ireland Nationalist and Loyalist communities: seeNorthern Ireland: The Choice, Penguin, 1994. On the precedents, and recent history see C. Campbell,Policing in Ireland: The Historical Balance Sheet, Policing in a New Society Conference, Belfast 5 Nov. 1994.
The English and Unionist cry for more “bobbies on the beat” as a solution to crime is clearly over-simplistic. In the original British Crime Survey, it was estimated that a patrolling officer catches someone in the act of a crime once every fifteen years. But the presence of street patrols by an unarmed police can provide for a measure of reassurance. Civil, community, policing, can provide for such a function.
See, for example, the policy document quorted inThe Guardian, 25th October 1994.
InInside the RUC, Oxford University Press, 1990.
The possibility of corruption is a stick often used to beat proponents of local community policing. Corruption to markedly varying degrees is a function of all police forces—there are few communities of police saints. But the international evidence is that corruption can be as much a function of state as of community police forces. In both such contexts, while it cannot be totally eliminated, it can be reduced by appropriate procedures, to
Thus the City of Toronto utilises its own municipal police to conduct street patrol functions, leaving both the Ontario Provincial Police to deal with more serious matters, and the RCMP to handle inter-provincial and major crimes. Given that the Canadian Police owes — like most such forces — its ancestry to the Irish Constabulary, it could be argued that the present police structure in Northern Ireland a distortion from the natural growth of policing in Ireland.
There are many examples which confer historical legitimacy on local communal policing structures in Ireland: see for example M. Kotsonouris,Retreat from Revolution: The Dail Courts, 1920–24, Irish Academic Press, 1994. There is also a developing literature on «policing» by the para-militaries: see for example, G. Boehringer, “The Future of Policing in Northern Ireland”, 3(2)Community Forum (1973); M. Morrissey and K. Pease, “The Black Criminal Justice System in West Belfast”, XXIThe Howard Journal (1982), 159–166; P. Hillyard, “Popular Justice”, in S. Spitzer, ed.,Research in Law, Deviance and Social Control (London: Sage, 1985), 7, and C. McCullagh “The Lads and the Hoods: Alternative Justice in an Irish Context”, in M. Tomlinson, ed.,Whose Law and Order?, Sociological Association of Ireland, 1988, 155–166.
See D. Walsh, “The Royal Ulster Constabulary — A Law Unto Themselves”, in Tomlinson,supra n. 11,Whose Law and Order?, Sociological Association of Ireland, 1988, at 92–108.
In February 1995, PANI launched a major and unique consultative exercise as a basis for new forms of accountability.
See for example, M. Brogden,The Police: Autonomy and Consent, Academic Press, 1992.
Until the appointment, in 1994, of a former Alliance councillor, David Cook, as Chair of the Authority.
R. Weitzer, “Northern Ireland's Police Liaison Committees”, 2Policing and Society (1992), 233–243.
For a similar British argument, see R. Morgan and C. Maggs, “Setting the P.A.C.E.: Police Community Consultation Arrangements in England and Wales”, 4Bath Social Policy Papers, (1985).
For a critical discussion of the use of Lay Visitors in England and Wales, see M. Brogden, T. Jefferson, & S. Walklate,Introducing Policework, Unwin Hyman, 1987.
See M. Brogden, “A Police Authroity — the Practice of Deference”, 25Sociological Review (1977), 325–49.
The Northern Ireland Office has now assumed a commitment to conduct such surveys through the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Queen's University.
In its acknowledgement of more “progressive” ideas regarding policing, as evidenced by its several publications, the RUC needs little advice on current policing policy innovations. On paper, at least, it is beyond rebuke for the commitment by the relevant Sections to police reform. But such developments are restrained by three complementary forces — the reality of the security situation itself, an “ideological” inculcation of security into policing practice, and the lack of vision bycertain senior figures that the RUC itself must be on the agenda for change.
In this negotiation process, it is important to remedy a major defect in the Community Forums of England and Wales. The police are important figures in the negotiative process but they are not in charge of the process i.e. they do not set the agenda, call, and chair the meetings. In South Africa, the Local Dispute Resolution Committees (LDRCs) which have some equivalence to Community Forums in areas of hostility to the state police, operate under an independent Chair and organisation. The LRDCs were critical in ensuring stability in the policing of the Election — primarily because their independence from both community and police gave them a degree of legitimacy which neither side could accord to the other.
The present Chief Constable, Sir Hugh Annesley, being an atypical exception.
On major influence on the reform of the South African Police has been the secondment of considerable numbers of European Union and Common-wealth police officers to that country.
On the potential reform of the South African Police, see M. Brogden & C.D. Shearing,Policing for a New South Africa, Routledge, 1993.
Symbolically, RUC officers rapidly and voluntarily discarded bullet-proof jackets as soon as permitted by their superiors.
Senior RUC sources have recently been quoted as recognising the requirement for a major re-training of the RUC to meet the requirements of the new situation,The Observer, 6th November 1994.
Although relatively, in discipline and in the absence of numerous reports of brutality, the present RUC is a world away from its the days of the “B” Specials and of Stalker's “shoot-to-kill” enquiry.
See the “Truth Bill”, published in Pretoria, 2nd November, 1994.
Subject to negotiations with the National Party in Cabinet. Inkatha opposes the Truth Commission but is, in effect, being overruled by the ANC.
Independent Commission for Police Complaints for Northern Ireland,Triennial Review, 1991–1994, HMSO, 1994.
For example, the June 1993 case of serious injury to a citizen on the Shankill Road, by a police baton round.
M. Maguire & C. Corbett,A Study of the Police Complaints System, HMSO, 1991.
In Northern Ireland, there is one police officer for every 135 of the population without taking account of the 17,000 members of the armed services who play a major role in support of the RUC. London, for example, has one officer for every 256 citizens while the England and Wales average is one to 446:The Work of the Police Authority 1991–1944, op.cit.
See for example, S. Holdaway,Recruiting a Multi-Ethnic Police Force, HMSO, 1991, and more generally, E. Cashmore, “Black Cops, Inc.”, in E. Cashmore and E. McGlaughlin, eds.,Out of Order: Policing Black People, Routledge, 1991, 87–108.
This is not a particular realistic solution, given existing proposals from the Conservative government, for manpower cutbacks in those same forces.
For a detailed argument for the reform of the criminal law and procedure in relation to the South African Police, see M. Brogden, “Reforming Police Powers in South Africa”, 1The Criminal Lawyer (1994), 6–11.
For evidence of the apparent failure of the prosecution process and judiciary in Northern Ireland, and in particular the remarkably lenient treatment of security force personnel, allegedly involved in unprovoked violence against civilians, see the several Reports by theCommittee on the Administration of Justice, Belfast. The Private Clegg case of February 1995 was singular only by its exception to that general rule.
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Brogden, M. An agenda for post-troubles policing in Northern Ireland — The South African precedent. Liverpool Law Rev 17, 3–27 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02449951
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02449951