U.S. policing is facing unprecedented challenges. Trust in the police has been eroded, and many people are understandably calling for change. Police reform in a deeply polarized nation is no easy task, but a model for such an effort can be found in Northern Ireland.
The Northern Ireland Conflict (1968–1998), known as “the Troubles,” was a 30-year nationalistic armed conflict and low-grade civil war with deep roots in Irish history.1 Violence during the Troubles escalated from peaceful protests to rioting, shootings, bombings, and neighborhood intimidation and expulsion.2 The conflict was seen on one side as a war of liberation and on the other as an issue of law and order, terrorism, and state security. During the 30-year crisis, more than 3,500 people were killed and almost 50,000 injured.3
There are clearly differences between the Northern Ireland conflict and the division the United States is now facing, but there are certainly similarities as well. Both involve deep political polarization, radicalization, and social identity: in the United States, involving elements of race and identity, and in Ireland, religion and identity. In both nations, policing has played a role.
Early in the Troubles, the police in Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), responded to civil unrest with violence.4 The application of hard power by police and soldiers served to further polarize disaffected communities and eroded trust.5 The police became seen as enforcers of state and symbols of oppression on one side of the conflict, and guardians of state and defenders of law and order on the other.6 In an expression similar to language used in the United States, some of the community saw the RUC as the “thin green line” between themselves and radical violence.7 In the United States, there is a similar duality to perceptions of police as the “thin blue line,” and the same calls to defund, disband, and reform police heard in the United States were also made toward the RUC.
As the Troubles entered the 1990s, war-weariness grew and the public appeal of violence as a means of achieving political goals receded.8 Following 30 years of violent conflict, the Troubles formally ended with the 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement.9 Police reform was a critical mandate of the peace agreement and was essential for peace itself.10
“The commission made its recommendations for change with a focus on building trust and legitimacy within a deeply divided nation.”
The Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland (ICP), or Patten Commission, named for Christopher Patten, the commission’s chair, was established as a key element of the Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement.11 The ICP was established in recognition of the fact that policing was a factor in the conflict and referred to policing as “being both part of the problem and part of the solution.”12 The Patten Commission acted on the mandate and sought to inquire “into policing in Northern Ireland and, on the basis of its findings, bring forward proposals for future policing structures and arrangements, including means of encouraging widespread community support for those arrangements.”13 To accomplish this objective, the commission held a series of open public meetings throughout Northern Ireland giving the people a voice: more than 10,000 people attended and more than 1,000 spoke.14 The Patten Commission recognized that peace and police reform go hand in hand, and both should come at the hands of the people.
The Patten Report, the commission’s product, was released on September 9, 1999, and included 175 recommendations for police reform.15 The ICP established five benchmarks as guiding principles for its work based on the mandate.16 The benchmarks included the following:
- Does the proposal promote efficient and effective policing?
- Will it deliver fair and impartial policing, free from partisan control?
- Does it provide for accountability, both to the law and to the community?
- Will it make the police more representative of the society they serve?
- Does it protect and vindicate the human rights and human dignity of all?17
The Patten Report consists of two specific pillars of police reform. The first pillar concerns traditional reforms addressing organizational systems and management structures.18 These reforms are in line with established police reform practices: improving accountability, recruitment, training, management structures, procedural and policy changes, and organizational/cultural changes.19 The second pillar of reform addresses policing philosophy. The report’s philosophical reforms focused on policing as not just the responsibility of law enforcement but also of the entire community, a community-police partnership and shared responsibility. The two Patten Report pillars and five benchmarks are not addressed separately but concurrently throughout the report. The more conventional components of the first pillar are imbued with those of the second. Within this framework, the Patten Report proposes reforms addressing issues in Northern Ireland that have also been challenging for U.S. law enforcement: accountability and transparency, civilian oversight, police training and human rights, and the influence of culture.
The commission made its recommendations for change with a focus on building trust and legitimacy within a deeply divided nation.20 Therein lies the value for U.S. policing: the Patten Report speaks to the challenges of police reform in a deeply polarized nation with two divergent views of the police and police reform.21
The work of the ICP and police reform in Northern Ireland are widely viewed as a success and one of the most thoughtful and comprehensive examples of democratic police reform with a lasting influence.22 What’s more, the Patten Report is acknowledged as a model for policing in the democratic world.23 Having the added benefit of 20 years hindsight, the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland and the Patten Report can provide a blueprint for police reform efforts in a deeply divided United States—a nation on the precipice of its own Troubles.
Notes:
1Richard Killeen, A Short History of Modern Ireland (Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), 286.
2Marianne Elliott, The Catholics of Ulster (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2001), 418.
3Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke, and Fiona Stephen, A Farewell to Arms? Beyond the Good Friday Agreement, 2nd ed. (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2006), 6–11.
4Brad Deardorff, The Roots of Our Children’s War: Identity and the War on Terrorism (Salinas, CA: Agile Press, 2013), 50.
5Simon Prince and Geoffrey Warner, Belfast and Derry in Revolt: A New History of the Start of the Troubles (Kildare, Ireland: Irish Academic Press, 2012), 88.
6The Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland (ICP), A New Beginning: Policing in Northern Ireland (Norwich, UK: Crown copyright, 1999): 2.
7Graham Ellison and Jim Smyth, The Crowned Harp: Policing Northern Ireland (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 177.
8Deardorff, The Roots of Our Children’s War, 55.
9Cox, Guelke, and Stephen, A Farewell to Arms? 1.
10Joanne Wright and Keith Bryett, Policing and Conflict in Northern Ireland (UK: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2000), 1.
11ICP, A New Beginning, 1.
12Graham Ellison, “A Blueprint for Democratic Policing Anywhere in the World?” Police Quarterly 10, no. 3 (September 2007): 244.
13ICP, A New Beginning, 123.
14ICP, A New Beginning, 11.
15ICP, A New Beginning, 107–122.
16ICP, A New Beginning, 5.
17ICP, A New Beginning, 6.
18Michael Kempa and Clifford D. Shearing, “Post-Patten Reflections on Patten” (lecture, Public Lecture Belfast, Queen’s University of Belfast, June 8, 2005).
19Kempa and Shearing, “Post-Patten Reflections on Patten.”
20Kempa and Shearing, “Post-Patten Reflections on Patten.”
21ICP, A New Beginning.
22David H. Bayley, “Police Reform as Foreign Policy,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 38, no. 2 (August 2005): 206–215.
23Kempa and Shearing, “Post-Patten Reflections on Patten.”
Please cite as
John C. Murray, “Northern Ireland Police Reform Model,” Police Chief Online, June 23, 2021.
