Background to the Research

• The recent histories of Northern Ireland and South Africa are characterised by a sustained period of political conflict. Within conflict settings, crime can be differentiated into 'political' and 'normal' crime.
• When the legitimacy of the State and its organs (the security forces and legal system) are integral to the nature of the conflict, this forecloses recourse to the normal channels by which communities seek to tackle 'normal' crime.
• In both the working-class areas of Northern Ireland and the black townships of South Africa, informal criminal justice mechanisms have developed to counter crime and anti-social behaviour in the respective communities.
• This article examines ways in which the communities in Northern Ireland and South Africa have responded to crime both during the conflict and thereafter. The paper then considers what lessons, if any, Northern Ireland can learn from the South African post-conflict experience.
  

Research Approach

• The report draws on focus group interview material conducted in both Northern Ireland and South Africa.
  

Main Findings

• Paramilitaries in republican areas of Northern Ireland have assumed the role of community 'police' from the very beginning of the 'Troubles' in what they describe as the absence of a legitimate police service.
• Many republican paramilitaries have embraced the concept of CRJ schemes to such an extent that demand outstrips the capacity of CRJ activists to deliver.
• The concept of restorative justice is not as widespread and less well known in loyalist areas. However, within the loyalist communities, the RUC are seen as a legitimate but ineffectual, part of a system of criminal justice which cannot react quickly enough and exact retribution deemed appropriate by victims of crime.
• Even though the Northern Ireland conflict reached a political and constitutional resolution through the Belfast Agreement, the associated reforms of the police and criminal justice systems have not yet happened.
• Prior to the peace process in South Africa, the police and criminal justice system were viewed by large sections of the population as being not only illegitimate but also as tools of the repressive apartheid state. The various mechanisms developed to counter crime received varying degrees of support and legitimacy.
• The democratic elections of 1994 saw the formation of a new government that was recognised by the majority of the population of South Africa as being the legitimate government of the people.
• Subsequently the (new) government has attempted to address the problems of illegitimacy and accountability within the criminal justice system.

Conclusions

• The key lesson for Northern Ireland is that political, constitutional and criminal justice reforms must operate in tandem to restore confidence in communities that real change is taking place.
• There must be an acceptance that such change will not happen overnight. The process is fragile and subject to scrutiny by those suspicious of its effectiveness.