MPs warn over neighbourhood justice schemes

Controversial neighbourhood justice schemes in the North should be vetted to prevent people with criminal or paramilitary links since 1998 working in them, a committee of MPs urged today.

The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee called for staff in the schemes operating in loyalist and republican areas to be screened by a panel and accredited under the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (POCVA) framework.

It also backed the Government’s stipulation that the groups must have a proper relationship with Sir Hugh Orde’s Police Service of Northern Ireland if they are to receive state funding.

“Like the Chief Constable (Sir Hugh Orde), we recognise that there can be constructive opportunities within these schemes for individuals with previous criminal convictions to serve their communities but there has to be a sensitive mechanism to ensure that those who have repudiated their past have indeed done so,” the Committee’s report said.

“Ensuring that community restorative justice schemes are staffed by suitable individuals with no current paramilitary connections and/or involvement in paramilitary organisations is crucial to building confidence in the schemes and to removing suspicion that they are a front for paramilitary organisations.

“We were told that the POCVA framework will be used by schemes to determine whether a person has previous criminal convictions or has been charged with an offence.

“We believe that this framework, backed up by the suitability panel, could be an appropriate and suitably rigorous means of determining suitability so long as the panel is able to take fully into account intelligence from the police and the local community.”

Restorative justice schemes deal with low level crime, bringing the perpetrators face to face with their victims.

Supporters of the schemes argue they are a viable alternative to punishment attacks and bring substantial savings to the criminal justice system.

However there have been fears in the North that in republican neighbourhoods critics of the PSNI view them as alternative police forces.

Two groups currently operate schemes in the province.

Community Restorative Justice Ireland run 15 schemes in nationalist areas while Northern Ireland Alternatives, which liaises with police, operates four.

With Sinn Fein due to decide this Sunday if it should back the police in Northern Ireland, the all-party committee expressed concern that loyalist schemes which would sign up now to the Government’s proposals were being starved of vital funds while republicans made their deliberations.

“We regret that the debate on the schemes’ work and their funding has become so heavily politicised,” the report said.

“Northern Ireland Alternatives has demonstrated its commitment to engaging with the police and has been successfully, although inadvertently, granted funding by the Department of Social Development.

“We recommend that the Government provide gap funding to those schemes that would qualify under the draft protocol and that involve the PSNI.”

The committee, which received evidence from the two agencies running schemes, Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde and former Irish Prime Minister Garret Fitzgerald, also backed an independent complaint system for people accessing the schemes but did not believe the Probation Board was the right organisation to administer it.

Patrick Cormack, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee’s chairman, said his members were unanimous in underlining the need for all the schemes to work closely with the PSNI if they were to be officially recognised and registered.

“There is no place anywhere in the UK, and least of all in Northern Ireland, for alternative policing systems, or for any community to seek to exercise any form of discipline or restraint, without being part of the criminal justice system,” the Conservative MP said.

“Nevertheless, we are also unanimous in recognising that such schemes can play a significant part in improving community life, as we have seen for ourselves.”

David Hanson, the Northern Ireland Office minister in charge of the plans for state funded schemes, welcomed the report.

“I am considering their findings very carefully and will announce the way forward soon,” he said.