Policing In Northern Ireland

This book provides an account and analysis of policing in Northern Ireland, providing an account and analysis of the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) from the start of 'the troubles' in the 1960s to the early 1990s, through the uneasy peace that followed the 1994 paramilitary ceasefires (1994-1998), and then its transformation into the Police Service of Northern Ireland following the 1999 Patten Report. A major concern is with the reform process, and the way that the RUC has faced and sought to remedy a situation where it faced a chronic legitimacy deficit. Policing Northern Ireland focuses on three key aspects of the police legitimation process: reform measures which are implemented to redress a legitimacy crisis; representational strategies which are invoked to offer positive images of policing; and public responses to these various strategies. Several key questions are asked about the ways in which the RUC has sought to improve its standing amongst nationalists: first, what strategies of reform has the RUC implemented? second, what forms of representation has the RUC employed to promote and portray itself in the positive terms that might secure public support? third, how have nationalists responded to these initiatives? The theoretical framework and analysis developed in the book also highlights general issues relating to the implications of police legitimacy and illegitimacy for social conflict and divisions, and their management and/or resolution, in relation to transitional societies in particular. In doing so it makes a powerful contribution to wider current debates about police legitimacy, police-community relations, community resistance, and conflict resolution.

This exciting book, newly available in paperback, aims to establish the historical and cultural reasons why there was only a participation rate of 7-8% by the Catholic population in policing Northern Ireland when the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) came into being in 2001, even though Catholics constituted 46% of the total population. It also aims to ascertain whether or not implementation of the Patten Commission's recommendation to recruit to the PSNI on a 50:50 basis between Catholics and non-Catholics has resulted in greater representation and what the political and cultural obstacles might be in transforming policing from meeting colonial model criteria to those of the liberal model advocated by Patten. In doing this, author Mary Gethins uses a wealth of historical data to show that there has for a long time been a problematic relationship between the native Irish Catholic population and the police, and the reasons for Catholic under-representation in the police force can be largely put down to this legacy. A survey of Catholic police officers focusing on family history, reasons for joining the police and sacrifices perceived to have been made in joining a largely Protestant organisation provide a strong empirical evidence base from which Gethins draws illuminating lessons. The work is informed by sociological theory to show that Catholic police officers are atypical of the Catholic population at large in Northern Ireland, and best explained by the concept of fragmented identity.

In societies suffering from acute political and social cleavage, policing agencies are invariably at the heart of the conflict resolution processes. In Northern Ireland, there have been calls for the RUC to be disbanded as well as for it to be retained unchanged. After considering various options and models especially from Spain, South Africa and the Netherlands this book charts a path for reform that takes account of Northern Ireland's political realities and will help build trust and inclusions.

Police reform, one of the most hotly debated issues in Northern Ireland, is at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement. This timely and dispassionate book examines the status quo and puts forward reasoned proposals to help create representative, impartial, decentralised, demilitarised and democratically accountable policing services - proposals which respect the identities and ideas of unionists, nationalists and others.

The Independent Commission On Policing For Northern Ireland, headed by Lord Patten, concluded in its 1999 report 'A new beginning for democratic accountability is key to a new beginning for policing and to involving the community as a whole in the delivery of policing. We recommend that an entirely new Policing Board be created ...'. This book is about the delivery of that 'new beginning for policing' in Northern Ireland, achieved at a time when most commentators considered the Policing Board was itself likely to fragment along traditional community lines. The story of the Policing Board, from its establishment in 2001 through to the reconstitution of the membership in 2009 is in many ways an inspirational one, showing what can be done by politicians and community representatives working together to bring about a fundamentally different way of policing that better meets the needs of the whole community. It offers valuable lessons and contemporary insights for law enforcement officers, accountability 'bodies' and academics world-wide, in key areas, including the need for a police service's composition to reflect the community that it serves; promoting public confidence in policing and policing with the community; upholding human rights in the context of policing civil unrest and terrorism; how to hold a police service to account while providing the support it requires; and dealing with the legacy of inter-communal violence with over 3,500 deaths. Drawing largely on publicly available material, it is an account by two individuals uniquely well-placed to produce an authoritative record: Professor Sir Desmond Rea, the Policing Board's Chairman for its first eight and a half years, and Robin Masefield, the senior civil servant who headed the British Government's team implementing the recommendations of the Independent Commission.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, University of Tubingen, course: LPS The Northen Irish Troubles, language: English, abstract: In the conflict between Catholic Nationalists and Protestant Loyalists in Northern Ireland the security forces have played and continue to play a controversial and crucial role. Hailed by Loyalists as defenders of Ulster, condemned by Nationalists for their biased, sectarian practices, the police forces were often not mediators between both sides but combatants in the ‘Troubles’ who fueled the conflict. This paper intends to look at the history of policing in Northern Ireland from 1920 to 2001, focusing on the early years in order to show a path-dependency of the ‘Troubles’. It will substantiate that the conflict between the police forces and the population during the ‘Troubles’, beginning in 1968, was not a singular, isolated event that can be examined without its historical context. But rather, the seed of this conflict had been planted fifty years prior, when Northern Ireland’s police forces were established. Chapter 3 looks at the public perception surrounding policing and will examine the differences and similarities of opinion between Catholics and Protestants. Chapter 4 deals with the internal problems facing policing. Furthermore, it will question Seamus Mallon’s, a former deputy leader of the SDLP and Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister from 1998 to 2001, statement that the RUC was “97% Protestant and 100% unionist” (Royal Ulster Constabulary 2006).

This is a study of the conditions present in an ethnically divided society that affect police-community relations.