Background to the Research

• Over the past few years a number of projects based around the concept of Restorative Justice have been initiated within both Unionist and Nationalist working-class communities.
• These projects differ from one another depending on local conditions, as well as community perceptions towards the police.
• Their aim is to attempt to develop a community response to the problem of anti-social behaviour, and to establish an alternative to punishment beatings and shootings.
  

Research Approach

• A small group of people, including some young people associated with the Alternatives project, were brought together to discuss issues surrounding anti-social behaviour, punishment beatings and their feelings about community and state responses to such behaviour. This article is an account of those deliberations.
  

Main Findings

• The rights and wrongs of anti-social behaviour take second place to the youth -community anatagonism which has developed, and almost serves as a justification for such behaviour.
• Paramilitaries and punishment beatings are not the solution.
• Young males would prefer to be apprehended by the police for their misdemeanors than by the paramilitaries.
• The political situation was partly to blame for diverting police attention away from anti-social behaviour.
• Athough the resources available to the police and courts are extensive, the perception is that the problem is not being adequately addressed and certainly not being resolved.
• It was those young people who had been referred to the Alternatives scheme who expressed most optimism about the benefits of the project.

Conclusions

• There was a consensus among the participants that co-operation at all levels, i.e. the community and the police, was essential if the problem of anti-social behaviour was to be addressed.
• Restorative justice schemes are not the answer to everything, but neither is policing, probation or the social services.