Policing Northern Ireland: Conflict, Legitimacy and Reform

ISBN-13: 9781843920731 / Angielski / Twarda / 2005 / 240 str.

Aogan Mulcahy

Opis

This book provides an account and analysis of the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) from the start of the troubles in the 1960s to the early 1990s, through the uneasy peace that followed the 1994 paramilitary ceasefires (1994-1998), and then its transformation into the Police Service of Northern Ireland following the 1999 Patten Report. A major concern is with the reform process and the way that the RUC has faced and sought to remedy a situation where it faced a chronic legitimacy deficit. Policing Northern Ireland focuses on three key aspects of the police legitimation process: reform measures which are implemented to redress a legitimacy crisis; representational strategies which are invoked to offer positive images of policing; and public responses to these various strategies. The theoretical framework and analysis developed in the book also highlight general issues relating to the implications of police legitimacy and illegitimacy for social conflict and divisions and their management

Spis treści

Part 1: Introduction and Context  1. Introduction: the 'Policing Question' in Northern Ireland  2. The police legitimation process: reform, representation, response  Part 2: Policing the Conflict  3. Rehabilitation and normalisation: reform and professionalisation of the RUC  4. Policing history: the organised memory of the RUC  5. Simultaneous surfeit and dearth: oppositional discourses on the RUC  Part 3: Policing the Peace  6. Police reform as peace dividend: debating the future of the RUC  7. Visions of normality: peace and the reconstruction of policing in Northern Ireland  8. Living memory: past and present in police reform debates  Part 4: Police Reform and Political Transition  9. A new beginning? The Patten Report on Policing in Northern Ireland  10. A new force? The Police Service of Northern Ireland  Part 5: Conclusions  Conclusions: policing, legitimacy and social conflict

O autorze

Aogán Mulcay is Senior Lecturer in the School of Sociology, University College Dublin. His research interests span policing and social change, police reform, crime and social control, law and society, youth and marginalisation, political violence and conflict resolution.