Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

these clumsy efforts. All this occurred in a context of continual human rightsabuses, and only increased the Catholic distrust of the authorities. In many areas,residents became entirely unwilling to cooperate with the police, refusing evento report crimes. ,HBut the IRA has not had an easy time of it, either. 'lbe IRA is not a policeforce. It had few resources to devote to investigations or corrections, little time(or patience) for due process considerations and human rights concerns. Hence,the IRA response to crime usually took the form of threats, beatings, propertydestruction, knee-cappings, expulsions, shootings, and executions. ,0) This wastypically unpleasant for all concerned. The accused had practically no chanceof presenting a defense and faced punishment out of proportion to the crime.Innocent people were punished, sometimes killed.l,o IRA volunteers, meanwhile,were burdened with the job of beating up petty crooks when they wanted to bemaking things difficult for the British.coI And worst of all, from a revolutionarystandpoint, the friction created by this situation threatened to isolate the revolutionariesfrom their constituency.',2One Republican activist explained the dilemma:[T] he conflict has created a cycle of dependency, where the community expectsthe [Republican] movement to deal with anti-social crime, the IRA feelsresponsible and must act but lacks the resources to deal with it other thanthrough violence and the result is damaging the kids who are after all partof the community.l,]This dependency worked two ways: the IRA depended on the Catholic communityfor protection, discretion, and support; the community relied on the IRA to protectit from crime, the state, and the Loyalists.64 The difficulty arose when protecting thecommunity from crime undercut the community's support for the paramilitaries.To resolve the dilemma, Republican activists have sought a means to "rlipngageresponslblY,"b' ideally by empowering the community to address anti-socialbehavior directly, without relying on either the IRA or the police. Republicanactivists approached a group of academics--criminologists and conflict resolutionexperts,md asked them to design a system that did not rely so much onbreaking people's legs. The scholars obliged, publishing their recommendationsin a Blue Book. The authors of the Blue Book, in extensive consultation with thelocal communities, set out to design a restorative justice system that met the followingcriteria: community involvement and support; nonviolence and operatingwithin the law; proportionality of the sanctions to the offense; due process and aguarantee of human rights; consistency; engagement in the community; contactwith community programs; and, adequate resources.06With the endorsement of Sinn Fein, Community Restorative Justice (CRJ)programs based on the Blue Book have been implemented on a trial basis.67In 1999, four pilot projects were established in Republican areas of Belfast andDerry.6R The IRA pledged its support for the process, ending punishmentbeatings and referring cases to the CRJ.69 In the first year, the new programshandled 200 cases, clearing 90 percent of them. By the end of 2001, 1,200 caseshad been processed through the progranl, including complaints about noise,family conflicts, burglaries, property damage, and chronic offenders. Between15 percent and 20 percent of these cases would previously have been handled232