Policing the Narrow Ground: Lessons from the Transformation of Policing in Northern Ireland

Description

The Patten Report on policing in Northern Ireland was a benchmark in the 1998 Belfast Agreement which signalled an end to sectarian violence in the North. Ten years after its publication, this book reflects on the Report, its role in the subsequent and ongoing transformation of policing in Northern Ireland, and the lessons of the Northern Ireland experience for security-sector reform internationally. The book includes exclusive personal reflections from key actors involved in this important process - such as Chris Patten, Hugh Orde, Maurice Hayes and Nuala O'Loan - along with a number of academic perspectives on policing reform and its international significance. This scrupulously edited volume relates not only to Irish studies but to peace studies, human rights and gender debates.

Sujets

• Irlanda del Norte
• Ireland
• Northern Ireland
• Stephen Ireland
• Irlande du Nord

Informations

• Publié par: Royal Irish Academy
• Date de parution: 10 janvier 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908996275
• Langue: English

Extrait

POLICING THE NARROW GROUND
Lessons from the transformation of policing in Northern Ireland
edited by John Doyle
Contents
Acknowledgements
Forewords Miche l Martin, TD, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Owen Paterson, MP, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
Glossary
Introduction John Doyle
P ART I: T HE I NDEPENDENT C OMMISSION ON P OLICING FOR N ORTHERN I RELAND
Chapter 1 Personal reflections on chairing the commission Chris Patten
Chapter 2 The curious case of the Patten Report Clifford D. Shearing
Chapter 3 Human rights and police reform Gerald W. Lynch
Chapter 4 The perspective of a career police officer Kathleen M. O Toole
Chapter 5 Building cross-community support for policing Maurice Hayes
Chapter 6 Policing and politics Peter Smith
P ART II: I MPLEMENTING THE TRANSFORMATION OF POLICING
Chapter 7 The role of the Oversight Commissioner Tom Constantine
Chapter 8 Leading the process of reform Hugh Orde
Chapter 9 The Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland: some reflections Nuala O Loan
Chapter 10 Public accountability: the Policing Board and the District Policing Partnerships Desmond Rea, Denis Bradley and Barry Gilligan
Chapter 11 The perception of policing change from the perspective of human-rights non-governmental organisations Maggie Beirne and Martin O Brien
P ART III: T HE WIDER LESSONS FROM THE N ORTHERN I RELAND CASE
Chapter 12 The politics of the transformation of policing John Doyle
Chapter 13 The importance of gender in the transformation of policing Mary O Rawe
Chapter 14 Police-community relations in Northern Ireland in the post- Patten era: towards an ecological analysis Graham Ellison
Chapter 15 Between symbolism and substance: police reform in post-conflict contexts Mark Downes
Bibliography
Author biographies
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A work such as this inevitably involves securing the co-operation and commitment of a huge number of people, and my appreciation of them goes far beyond what any standard acknowledgement can encompass. First of all, I thank the authors. All of them responded positively and quickly to a request from me that they contribute to this book. All of them were already busy, some with enormous public commitments, yet they provided their contributions and graciously responded to queries, and indeed submitted updates, as the process of transformation in Northern Ireland was continuing through a very crucial debate on devolution as we all wrote.
The nature of a body such as the Independent Commission on Policing is that it leaves few archives behind for future researchers, and so I would like to thank in particular the members of the Commission who contributed to this book; they had to rethink their inputs of ten years earlier to write their chapters, therefore leaving some record of the process to complement their excellent Report .
I would also like to thank the Minister for Foreign Affairs Miche l Martin, TD, and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Owen Paterson, MP, for agreeing to write forewords for the book, and officials in both the DFA and NIO for all their assistance.
The genesis of this project lies in a conversation with Irish diplomat Eamonn McKee, then head of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs Conflict Resolution Unit, and at time of writing Ambassador in Seoul. I am grateful for that conversation and for his support as the idea developed into a project and this book. Many politicians, diplomats and community activists agreed to be interviewed for this book. Most of them did not wish to be named, some from a sense of modesty, as they down-played their own contribution or insight, and some because they continue to be involved at a high level and did not wish to point publicly to previous disagreements with those with whom they now seek to work. I thank them all. I would like in particular to offer my thanks to the many officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs, where tradition dictates that they are not individually named. Conversations with officials there led to this project being developed and were invaluable in seeing it through to conclusion. Their role and contribution, on this and on other projects in my experience, always extend well beyond what is purely professionally required. Their knowledge, expertise, insight and analysis were always available to me during the production of this book and were always useful. I hope they will recognise their intellectual contributions, and I thank them all. As ever in these circumstances, they have no responsibility for the text as I have written it.
I would like to thank my university, Dublin City University. It provides a very supportive environment for research and the time and space to take on a project such as this. Academic colleagues and postgraduate students at the School of Law and Government and the Centre for International Studies in DCU have, over many years, also sharpened my own thinking on the Northern Ireland conflict and peace process. I would like to thank my colleague and partner Dr Eileen Connolly for, as ever, her insightful comments on my text. The errors and lack of clarity I add back in afterwards are my own fault.
I would like to acknowledge the publishers, the Royal Irish Academy. The Publications Office staff in the Academy are a delight to work with, and my thanks in particular to the managing editor on this project, Helena King, and her colleagues Maggie Armstrong and Fidelma Slattery, for editorial assistance and for design and typesetting, respectively. Thanks also to Martin Melaugh for allowing us to use his photograph of Maurice Harron s sculpture Hands Across the Divide as part of the cover image. I would also like to acknowledge the staff in the offices of some of the authors for assisting with communications and logistics-in particular Keavy Sharkey, Yvonne Phillips, Lorraine Calvert and Olga Cordi.
Finally, I would like to thank my family: my parents Seamus and Marie for being supportive when they must have preferred that I stuck with my accountancy exams all those years ago; my colleague and partner Eileen and our children, Leah, Eamon, Se n and Orla, for putting up with the distractions caused by this book; and my granddaughters Beth and Anna, who (in Anna s case in some years time) will like seeing their names in print. Finally, I would like to acknowledge and remember the matriarch of our extended family, Cornelia Doyle, who passed away, in her 95th year, in her beloved West Cork as the book was being planned.
John Doyle
Centre for International Studies, School of Law and Government,
Dublin City University, June 2010
FOREWORD BY THE MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The publication a decade ago of the report of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland, known of course as the Patten Report , was one of the milestones of the peace process. The Commission produced a blueprint for transforming policing in the North, a blueprint that it called A New Beginning . In the year when David Ford has become the first Minister for Justice in the restored devolved institutions, we can say that the new beginning promised by Patten has been realised. This collection of essays by members of the Independent Commission, by those who were involved in implementing the Commission s recommendations and by distinguished academics brings together a series of important reflections on the journey from 1999 to now, reflections which I hope will inform policy-making, not just on this island of Ireland, but perhaps even further afield in the years ahead.
The Commission wrote that it had been encouraged to approach its task with imagination, common sense and generosity of spirit . It did so successfully, using five tests as a matrix for its proposals-testing for effectiveness and efficiency; for fairness and impartiality; for accountability to the law and to the community; for a police more representative of society; and for the protection and vindication of the human rights of all. The Commission s report is a broad, strategic consideration of policing in the round, perhaps best described as a manifesto for transformation from force to service .
The implementation of Patten s 175 recommendations has largely been achieved. This process has resulted in that transformation to service which lies at the heart of the Independent Commission s vision. Policing is being delivered for all the community by the community, with an acceptance of the police service unparalleled in the history of Northern Ireland. This reality facilitated the devolution of policing and justice powers back to locally elected representatives in the Assembly and Executive on 12 April 2010.
In moving the policing agenda forward in the decade ahead, I believe it is essential that what I call the spirit of Patten -that commitment to local accountability and transparency, by a police service representative of society as a whole-remains at the heart of our endeavour. The Policing Board, the District Policing Partnerships (DPPs) and the Office of the Police Ombudsman allow all those with an interest in effective policing-from the grass roots, through political representatives to the very highest ranks of the PSNI-public spaces in which to discuss, agree and take forward objectives, but crucially also forums in which to review problems and failures. To these important institutions, we now add Assembly oversight and scrutiny.
That Patten spirit was all about changing the culture that surrounds policing. The accountability institutions are important elements of this: notwithstanding the at times bureaucratic imposition they may pose for individual police officers and local politicians, we should not lose sight of their purpose in bringing about that necessary cultural shift and associated perceptions of policing. These changes need to be further embedded in Northern Ireland society so that all police officers feel fully secure and welcome, living and sociali