Police accountability,the Irish peace process and the continuing challenge of secrecy

Abstract

Following a symposium in June 2012, on ‘Policing communities: race, class and the state’ (organised by the Institute of Race Relations and the Power, Conflict and Justice Research Group, Edge Hill University, in conjunction with the Tottenham Defence Campaign), the author traces how police accountability has evolved following the reforms promised on the back of the Good Friday Agreement. He demonstrates how this relates to the current ‘secret justice’ agenda, whereby the UK government is trying to extend ‘closed material procedures’ to most civil court cases. The Belfast-based human rights organisation, Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), with an interest in both of these areas, has lobbied extensively for the creation of a genuinely independent police complaints mechanism and campaigned for an end to ‘emergency’-type legislation rather than its normalisation. Much of its recent efforts have related to preventing the rollback of what was actually progressed or promised following the Agreement. For a wider discussion of issues raised at the symposium, see the article by Liz Fekete in her commentary, ‘Total policing: reflections from the frontline’, in this issue.