SAOIRSE32

BBC
25 March 2008
By Linda Pressly

BBC Radio 4’s Law In Action looks at how organisations with their roots in the Troubles still have a role in Northern Ireland’s justice system.

Margaret did not report the incident to the police

“I’ve come because some people have come to the door with guns demanding money, and I haven’t got the money to give them.”

Margaret - who did not want to be identified - was anxious and tearful. She was one of the first to appear at the offices of Community Restorative Justice Ireland (CRJ) on the Twinbrook Estate, a Catholic area of West Belfast, that morning.

Margaret did not consider calling the police after she and her family were threatened by those two armed men.

Like many in this part of Belfast, she is deeply mistrustful of the police. Instead, Margaret rang Jim McCarthy - one of the leading lights of CRJ.

CRJ and its counterparts in the Protestant community were organisations founded in the early 1990s - a non-violent response to punishment beatings and shootings.

They began to deal with criminal and anti-social behaviour at a time when normal policing was almost absent.

These days CRJ deals with everything from neighbour disputes and anti-social behaviour to domestic violence and more serious crimes.

Republican connections

The two men who appeared at Margaret’s door demanding £10,000 claimed to be from a Republican group.

Jim McCarthy is a former Republican prisoner who works for CRJ

Jim McCarthy is well connected, and one of several former Republican prisoners who work for CRJ. He checked the men’s claims with his contacts.

They were false. Margaret was relieved because anyone on the wrong side of organisations like the IRA still faces ostracism in the Catholic community.

Jim McCarthy thought the family was singled out for extortion because Margaret’s partner Barry once had a run-in with republicans years ago.

“They know that Margaret and Barry won’t go to the police,” he said. “They think that Barry wouldn’t come to us either because of the conflict he had with Republicans 20 years ago.

So these men see the family as an easy touch - here’s money that can be extorted and it won’t be reported.”

Jim McCarthy tried to persuade Margaret to report the men to the police. She refused.

“I don’t have any involvement with the police, and I don’t want to,” she said.

Police Involvement

While Margaret and Jim McCarthy talked in the front office, in the kitchen at the back the other CRJ workers were chatting with a visitor.

A police officer, Sgt Peter Brannigan from Lisburn Area Command, discussed some of the other on-going cases at CRJ over a cup of tea.

It is only since Sinn Fein signed up to support the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) last year that Sgt Brannigan has had a formal relationship with CRJ.

“If you look at what’s been achieved in a short space of time it’s nothing short of impressive,” he said.

According to Sgt Brannigan, in the last year CRJ has brought a significant number of cases to the police. CRJ workers have also accompanied officers to victims’ homes to give them the confidence to make a statement.

Criticisms

But some within the Nationalist community are suspicious of CRJ. Two and a half years ago Bernadette O’Rawe’s nephew was called to a meeting at a CRJ office after he was involved in a local dispute. She says her nephew was coerced.

“It’s a well-known fact that many people in CRJ come from IRA backgrounds. And people in the community see a bit of muscle there. People are still frightened of the IRA; there’s no doubt about that.”

At the Twinbrook office, Jim McCarthy denied CRJ uses coercion to get results.

He and Sgt Brannigan swapped notes on Margaret’s story. But unless she was willing to make a statement, there was no case. Jim McCarthy insisted that any information that came his way about the two armed men would go straight to the police.

Generations of mistrust

CRJ has been criticised for being selective about the information it gives to the police about crime.

This is something Northern Ireland’s Chief Inspector of Criminal Justice, Kit Chivers, will be addressing.

He is currently inspecting CRJ with a view to accrediting it, and bringing it under the auspices of the criminal justice system. Similar Protestant organisations in Northern Ireland have already been accredited.

Margaret left CRJ’s Twinbrook office that morning feeling safer. Jim McCarthy had arranged for a number of well-known Republicans to drop in on her family at home. They hoped these public visits would scare away the extortionists.

In Nationalist communities, the PSNI is confronting generations of mistrust that hardened through decades of the Troubles.

Margaret felt it was only CRJ that offered her any kind of recourse to justice. And until people like her decide to report crime to the police, the justice gap in Northern Ireland will remain.