Future Prospects

Abstract

Thus far we have traced the historical roots of the informal justice systems in Northern Ireland and South Africa and examined how both paramilitaries and vigilantes currently engage in summary punitive measures within their own communities. This has included insights into the different motivations behind, for example, loyalist and republican violence in Northern Ireland and the changing nature of communitybased justice in post-apartheid South Africa. We have considered the victims of informal justice and the ambiguity surrounding victimhood status, posing questions as to who perceives themselves to be the true victims in this scenario – those subjected to paramilitary/vigilante violence or the community against which crimes are perpetrated. Importantly, within the context of increasing ‘normal’ crime and decreasing ‘political’ crime in two post-conflict countries, we have attempted to explore both the level of support for informal justice among the communities where it is most prevalent and understand their endorsement of a system which espouses violence as a means of retribution. We have also explored the response of statutory and other non-governmental agencies to the problem of informal justice, their indifference to, or at least minimisation of, both the extent and nature of the problem. Finally, we have looked at what the key alternatives are. Herein, we considered community-based restorative justice alternatives developing in Northern Ireland and South Africa, and the possibilities for using the law as a way of tackling the source of the violence perpetrated by paramilitaries and vigilantes, with a particular emphasis on addressing human rights abuses synonymous with summary justice.