Community-Based Restorative Justice in Northern Ireland: A Neo-Traditionalist Paradigm?

McGrattan, Cillian

doi:10.1111/j.1467-856x.2010.00405.x

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Restorative justice practices in Northern Ireland include victim-perpetrator mediation, education projects and cross-community initiatives (Gormally, 2006). Some community-based restorative justice schemes seek to mediate in neighbourhood disputes, implicitly limiting the role of legal professionals (McGrattan, 2010). However, more serious violent crime remains the responsibility of the formal justice system.…”

Section: Retributive Justice and Restorative Justicementioning

confidence: 99%

Memory, Truth and Justice: Understanding the Experience of Victims of Terrorism and Political Violence: The Cases of the United Kingdom and Spain

Serrano¹,

Lynch²,

Argomániz³

et al. 2017

SSRN Journal

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The issue of victimhood has suffered comparative neglect by scholars interested in the study of terrorism and political violence. Traditionally, it has been the actions of violent groups and the response to them by the state that have tended to attract academic attention. More recently for governments whose populations have suffered protracted campaigns of violence perpetrated by sub-state armed groups, the protection of those affected has become a policy priority. However in order to provide appropriate assistance to victims of terrorism and political violence, a detailed and nuanced understanding of the social, personal and political needs of these individuals and their families is necessary. With a view to developing our understanding of the needs of victims of terrorism and political violence, this chapter will examine the social and political needs of these individuals and their families. In attempting to conceptualise these needs, the importance of context cannot be underestimated therefore this paper focuses specifically on the case of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland (NI) as well as Spain, more specifically, the Basque Country. Using the analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with both victims and representatives from victims' groups in both countries,

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Section: Retributive Justice and Restorative Justicementioning

confidence: 99%

Memory, Truth and Justice: Understanding the Experience of Victims of Terrorism and Political Violence: The Cases of the United Kingdom and Spain

Serrano¹,

Lynch²,

Argomániz³

et al. 2017

SSRN Journal

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“…Increasingly, ideas about truth recovery are filtered through specific institutional proposals -particularly those linked to the disciplines of restorative justice and transitional justice (Sullivan and Tifft, 2006;Teitel, 2000). On the one hand,'traditional' or 'retributive' systems of justice -in which 'forensic' evidence or 'truth' (Clark, 2008, p. 335) is debated in a conflictual atmosphere by lawyers -are contrasted with community-based restorative justice schemes, which, in the case of Northern Ireland, have developed directly out of an 'informal' system of paramilitary punishment beatings (Eriksson, 2009;McGrattan, 2010b).…”

Section: The Truth Recovery Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Increasingly, ideas about truth recovery are filtered through specific institutional proposals – particularly those linked to the disciplines of restorative justice and transitional justice (Sullivan and Tifft, 2006; Teitel, 2000). On the one hand, ‘traditional’ or ‘retributive’ systems of justice – in which ‘forensic’ evidence or ‘truth’ (Clark, 2008, p. 335) is debated in a conflictual atmosphere by lawyers – are contrasted with community‐based restorative justice schemes, which, in the case of Northern Ireland, have developed directly out of an ‘informal’ system of paramilitary punishment beatings (Eriksson, 2009; McGrattan, 2010b). The key features of these schemes are ideas such as the importance of concentrating on the crime, not the person, of viewing crime as a social or community problem which is rectified through the involvement of community representatives, and of reparations being made at a community level by perpetrators (Ventura Miller, 2008, p. x).…”

Section: The Truth Recovery Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spectres of History: Nationalist Party Politics and Truth Recovery in Northern Ireland

McGrattan

2011

Political Studies

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This article critically explores the idea that resolving ethnic conflicts requires some form of truth recovery mechanism to ensure accountability for past actions. While the truth recovery model suggests the need for a pluralistic, inclusive approach to peace building, I argue that its intersection with party and identity politics means that it has the potential to destabilise settlement processes. Using the Northern Ireland case as an example, I describe how the truth recovery model can trigger a contest over the past in which ethnicised understandings of the past and the present come to the fore. An essentially disruptive element in peace building, truth recovery conjures into existence alternative historical narratives, counterfactual historical scenarios and, in an ethnically divided society, may actually narrow the space for debating ‘peace’ and thereby reproduce entrenched and polarised identities.

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“…Linked with this is the fact that Brown airbrushes the political implications of the intervention of those criminologists and legal theorists. Campbell, for example, has chaired the Committee on the Administration of Justice, which, as I pointed out, has traditionally been pro‐nationalist and anti‐state in orientation; Brown's allusion to Gormally and McEvoy's work is apposite given the fact that they have been instrumental in promoting the controversial and highly politicised Provisional republican variation of community‐based restorative justice (Ashe, 2009; McGrattan, forthcoming).…”

Section: Transition and The Politics Of Progressmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This misconstrues the import of my allusion to the fact that TJ is intimately linked, epistemologically and referentially, with consociationalism. The question is not whether identities are malleable – or even, in Brown's term, ‘malign’ – but rather what variables or processes trigger and reproduce ethnicised aspects of those identities (Brubaker, 2004; McGrattan, 2010). Consociationalism is not simply predicated on a methodologically post hoc understanding of ethnicity, but actively reproduces received and elite-inspired wisdom about ethnic conflicts.…”

Section: Context and Missing The Pointmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of Transitional Justice or All's Well That Ends Well: A Response to Brown

McGrattan

2010

Politics

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IntroductionI should at the outset declare an interest -I have known Kris Brown for a number of years and respect and admire his work. In saying that, I found Brown's (2010) reply to my article on transitional justice (TJ) (McGrattan, 2009) both welcome and troubling. I welcome it because it is emblematic of the literature and the scholarly approach that I attempted to critique in the first instance. It is troubling for exactly the same reason: that the normative import of TJ scholarship -as represented by Brown and the authors he cites -continues to (re)produce politically loaded and morally troubling prognoses simply by evading any form of self-analysis. Brown asks for 'deeper engagement' between political science and TJ scholarship; however, it is difficult to see where this can come from given his demonstrable tendency to disregard or subsume queries surrounding the political implications of the TJ paradigm within the framework of that paradigm. Rigour and misdirectionBrown chooses to base part of his reply on the suggestion that my reading of the sources I cite was incomplete and 'does little to convince the reader of his rigour in getting to grips with the TJ literature' (Brown, 2010, p. 121). Linked with thisliterally and analytically -is Brown's defence of his 'exemplars' (his word) of the TJ 'method ', Colm Campbell and Ita Connolly (2003 and, whom he recommends for their 'source triangulation and mixing of method' (Brown, 2010, p. 120). Certainly Campbell and Connolly (2003) make extensive use of primary source material in their analysis of the Falls Road Curfew in June 1970. Contrary to Brown's depiction of my query, the problem is not with the 'amount' of material but with the fact that it all points one way -namely, in an anti-state and neonationalist interpretation. A poor handling of evidence may, in theory, lead to multiple and contradictory conclusions; similarly, the balancing of historical evidence, in theory, leads to nuanced and often qualified conclusions. Campbell and Connolly's analysis is suggestive of systematic bias. In fact, comparing their research

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Community-Based Restorative Justice in Northern Ireland: A Neo-Traditionalist Paradigm?

Cited by 7 publications

References 27 publications

Memory, Truth and Justice: Understanding the Experience of Victims of Terrorism and Political Violence: The Cases of the United Kingdom and Spain

Memory, Truth and Justice: Understanding the Experience of Victims of Terrorism and Political Violence: The Cases of the United Kingdom and Spain

Spectres of History: Nationalist Party Politics and Truth Recovery in Northern Ireland

The Politics of Transitional Justice or All's Well That Ends Well: A Response to Brown

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