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Critically evaluate whether the Patten Report’s recommendations can serve as a basis for resolving the problems associated with policing in Northern Ireland. ... I will then outline the main proposals of the Patten Report and assess their effectiveness in addressing these problems as both sides of the community see them. ... The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 recognised the “highly emotive” aspect of policing, and set up a Commission under Chris Patten, a former Northern Ireland government minister, to make recommendations for ‘future policing structures and arrangements’ (Ellison and Smyth 2000 pp177). When the Patten Report was published in 1999 there was outcry from the unionist supporters of Northern Ireland. ... At a meeting in the Ulster Hall in Belfast about a thousand people voiced their opposition to the report’s recommendations (Irish Times, 20 September 1999)” (Ellison and Smyth, 2000 pp150).
However, the Patten report was greeted with great enthusiasm by republicans and nationalists alike. ...
There have been many allegations of harassment and assault of nationalists and republicans at the hands of the RUC, but it wasn’t until a highly critical Amnesty International report was published in 1978 that the RUC felt that an inquiry should be undertaken. ... “Thus could Roy Mason (then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland) maintain that ‘The Bennett Report has not said that ill-treatment has taken place’” (Mulcahy, 2000 pp81), and so the RUC sees themselves vindicated of the accusations and the issue is forgotten by all but the nationalists. ... They are adamant that the Patten Commission misinterpreted the levels of support for the RUC among nationalists due to the behind-closed-doors theory. ...
The Patten Report identified as the source of problems with policing primarily political reasons, notably the “failure in the past to find an acceptable democratic basis for the governance of Northern Ireland that accommodated the rights and aspirations of both the unionist and nationalist communities” (Patten Commission, 1999 pp2), and that the policing has been contentious purely because the state it policed has been, by its very nature, contentious itself. The Report makes it clear that it is because the police were subject to control by the Stormont government which was purely unionist, and then subsequently subject to the rule of Westminster, that it is seen by a proportional amount of the population “not primarily as upholders of the law but as defenders of the state, and the nature of the state itself has remained the central issue of political argument” (1999 pp2). ... 5 of the Patten Report. ... The Report specifies two aims it strives to accomplish, “to help ensure that past tragedies are not repeated in the future” and to provide “the opportunity for a new beginning to policing in Northern Ireland with a police service capable of attracting and sustaining support from the community as a whole” (pp4).
The Patten Report proposes changes under the headings of human rights; accountability; policing the community; policing in a peaceful society; public order policing; management and personnel; information technology; structure of the police service; size of the police service; composition and recruitment of the police service; training, education and development; culture, ethos and symbols; and cooperation with other police services. I will now discuss whether the Patten Report can serve as a basis for resolving the problems, as I have listed them above, associated with policing in Northern Ireland.
Approximate Word count = 2772
Approximate Pages = 11.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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