Examination of Witnesses (Questions 380
- 396)
MONDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2004
MR DO«NAL
MCKINNEY,
MR PETER
MCGUIRE,
MS MINA
WARDLE, MR
TOM WINSTON
AND MR
JIM AULD
Q380 Mr Clarke: I am going to ask
another complex problem related to paramilitary feuds. The Community
Relations Council have said to us in their evidence that they
do not consider intra-community sectarian violence to be `hate
crime'. Again, it is a bold statement, but is it one that people
would agree with or comment on? How do we define those offences
that go on intra-community? Are they `hate crime' or are they
not?
Mr Winston: It depends on what
way you look at that. People hating each other, is that `hate
crime'? No. We all hate something, although some of us would not
like to admit it. Possibly part of that is down to the fact that
they do not like individuals within different paramilitary organisations.
Whether that is `hate crime' or not is open for debate, but there
is obviously a dislike there.
Mr McKimmey: There are more than
two communities in the north. When the Parrick Report came out
with the Runnymede Trust in 2000 they talked about "a community
of communities" recognising that everybody belongs to an
ethnic group. It is important to move away from race and to try
to see the different dynamics. If you start talking about ethnic
groups, often it is about colour. It is not about colour. The
travelling community (and they are represented here) are not black,
they are not Asian, they are an ethnic group who experience racism.
It is very important we talk about the different communities we
all share. We have a complexity of communities here. There are
not just two communities. I think that is where sometimes we need
to change, in relation to understanding `hate crimes' taking on
certain dynamics.
Mr Auld: One of the points I was
making in my submission is that from my research into the history
of `hate crime' I found that there is not a clear definition of
what that means internationally. My understanding is that the
language is being changed now and the phrase that is coming more
to the front is `bias crime' because that is more specific in
terms of what it is that is happening. You can hate somebody and
not be involved in a `bias crime', but if you commit a `bias crime'
it is very specific that you are being biased towards someone.
In terms of that inter-paramilitary group, it may be a `hate crime'
but not necessarily a `bias crime', if you understand the logic.
Q381 Mr Clarke: No, I do not. I apologise
for asking the question. The Community Relations Council did say
that they did not wish that to be seen as `hate crime' and I thought
that was important.
Ms Wardle: In our community we
like to think that the intra-community violence actually is pay
back time for an awful lot of people, it is just individuals paying
each other back rather than two organisations or differently opposing
groups. Very often it is to do with something that happened 20
years ago and somebody remembers it.
Q382 Mr Clarke: Within my own community
in Northamptonshire in England we pioneered monitoring and reporting
procedures for `hate crime' whereby people could decide themselves
if a crime had been committed against them and they could report
it, even if it was not reported against them when they witnessed
it. That led to an incredible breakthrough in terms of being able
to record and monitor incidents and then match those against those
that are recorded and monitored by the various different bodies
and authorities. Is that something you would encourage? One of
the faults here is that there is a lack of detailed and comprehensive
monitoring and reporting. Is it not about time the community took
it upon themselves to take responsibility for reporting it and
having the power to decide themselves what is or is not a `hate
crime'?
Mr McKimmey: Yes. Third party
reporting, which was something we worked through with the travelling
community, was reasonably successful and it is something that
should be thought about here.
Mr Auld: In terms of my own organisation,
last year we dealt with 43 cases that we have logged as `hate
crime' throughout the North.
Q383 Mr McGrady: In dealing with
cases under restorative justice you must get a good insight into
the motivations or responses of the perpetrators and the victim.
Are there any lessons you can learn in general terms from that
experience as to how we could better address the general area
of `hate crime'?
Mr Auld: I think it has already
been talked about. I think the issue is a lack of understanding,
fear, a sense of power for some people and a lack of education
around the issues.
Mr Winston: I represent the Greater
Shankhill Alternatives. Restorative justice is a bit of a buzz
word at the moment. What we tried to do was simplify it. Basically
it is about people helping people and it is a bottom-up approach.
It is something that goes amiss by many people including governments.
You cannot impose something on a community. You have to give the
community the tools to try to give them the opportunity to come
out of it. What we found was that when we gave the community the
tools, that is bringing in the offender to sit round the table
and discuss the problem, we could come up with solutions. That
is the way forward. It has worked. It is proven to work within
the Greater Shankhill community. In the past a lot of people within
our community were always getting experts in to tell them how
to work. What we found through our research was that there was
a lot of expertise within the community. When we first started,
restorative justice was a concept that not a lot of people knew
about but it was what everybody was doing. It is about you helping
your neighbour and your neighbour helping you. It is something
that always happened. Putting the term restorative justice around
it within Northern Ireland tends to politicise it a lot and that
is the problem with it. Basically in its simple form it is about
helping your neighbour and letting your neighbour help you. The
more we developed that the better response we got from within
the community.
Q384 Mr McGrady: Do you refer problems
or concepts or findings to other organisations?
Mr Winston: If there are things
that come up within the organisation that we have not got the
expertise to deal with, we would refer that on. We have found
that there is a lot of expertise within the community to deal
with drug and alcohol abuse, trauma, things of that nature. If
it is more serious than that, we would pass that on to the relevant
authorities to help to deal with it. We find that by keeping most
things within the community there is a better opportunity for
young people to see the error of their ways, giving something
back to their victim and then their community and then themselves,
and that gives us the opportunity of working with those young
people to prevent them doing that thing in the future.
Q385 Mr McGrady: You seem to be indicating
that one of the consequences of restorative justice endeavours
is it reduces the possibility of re-offending. Is that your finding?
Mr Winston: Very much so.
Q386 Mr McGrady: I have some concern
about restorative justice, not restorative justice per se
but about certain organisations claiming to be restorative justice
who are perpetrating `punishment' beatings as their interpretation
of restorative justice. How much does that impact upon the obviously
valuable and evenhanded work that you are doing?
Mr Winston: I do not know what
you are speaking about. We are a restorative justice programme.
We try to stop young people getting beaten and shot for the misdemeanours
that they cause within the community. We have been an all-inclusive
organisation. There are statutory bodies, such as the police,
the probation service, social services, that would sit on the
various committees we would be involved in. It is a holistic approach
and we have found that using that holistic approach is the only
way forward. If there is evidence to suggest that people within
Shankhill Alternatives are not doing things properly, then I think
that should be put to Shankhill Alternatives and the people that
are on their different management committees. Unfortunately, in
the past people have been saying that it is just the paramilitaries
wearing suits and having control within their communities when
it is the opposite. I do not know how many young people we have
convinced to stay away from paramilitary groups, not to join them,
to take a different route and I do not think we are given any
credit for it.
Q387 Mr McGrady: The organisations
I was referring to have no connection with what you are talking
about. I am talking about so-called community groups calling themselves
restorative justice who will not have any contact at all with
the courts, the probation service, the police or social services,
but rather a self-fulfilling organisation. Thank you very much
for that very helpful response.
Mr Auld: Certainly in the past
we have had the same difficulties as Tom has had. I am from Community
Restorative Justice Ireland and we operate in nationalist areas
and as such we do not have a relationship with the PSNI. We have
a good working relationship with all the other agencies of the
state. We have a good working relationship with the probation
and social services, the housing executive and all the other agencies
that flow from them. However, we do not have a relationship with
the police. You are all politicians. Some of you will be in Leeds
this week talking about the policing issues, or certainly people
from the main political parties are going to be there to talk
about resolving the difficulties with the police service. I am
not here to apologise for my own organisation not having a relationship
with the police. We would welcome that day. We are one organisation
that is actively trying to promote the idea in the nationalist
community that there is a need for a genuine and open police service
operating in our community because we see at first hand the effects
of not having a responsive police service to our community's need.
Last year we had over 1,100 cases that we dealt with throughout
the north and 800 or so cases we dealt with successfully, but
in 147 of those cases the people we dealt with said that they
did not want to take part in the process that we offered and they
walked away. None of those people who did not want to take part
in the process that we offer has been punished or been put out
of the country or had any other ill effects. They have to live
with the consequences of arguing with the people that they had
an argument with in the first place. I had a meeting two years
ago with the criminal justice section of the Northern Ireland
Office when the same points were originally made about restorative
justice and the accusations that were made about the name, and
I told the director of that branch simply to put up or shut up,
that if they had any information about us as an organisation or
any individuals involved in it they should go to the proper authorities
and make those complaints known or come to me as the director
of the organisation and I would ensure that none of those people
would have anything to do with the organisation. There was no
reply. I would say the same to anybody. If there is anybody who
has got any evidence that anybody in CRJ Ireland has had anything
to do with punishment beatings or shootings, please come and tell
me. I would be delighted to deal with it.
Q388 Mr Beggs: Paramilitary-style
shootings and beatings (so-called `punishment' attacks) appear
to be increasing, particularly in loyalist areas. Why is this
the case given the work that you are involved in?
Mr Winston: I would dispute those
figures for the areas we are working in. The figures that we have
would prove that paramilitary attacks in the Shankhill have decreased
dramatically over the last six years. For example, in the nine
months of research from March 1996 to December 1996 there were
18 or 19 punishment attacks in the Shankhill area. I would argue
that there have been less than 10 since 1998 to now for those
involved in anti-social type behaviour. There will always be punishment
attacks for those involved in paramilitary organisations who transgress
the rules of that organisation, but unfortunately that is outside
of our remit. We are trying to protect young people from being
beaten who are involved in anti-social behaviour. I wish there
would come a day when we could influence the paramilitaries not
to go down that road for their own members, but that is something
we cannot deal with at the moment. In Northern Ireland a lot of
people are good at saying you should always do something else
as opposed to giving you praise for the work you are doing. The
figures that are being bandied about at the moment might mean
that there have been paramilitary attacks in other areas, but
we have to look at the remit that we have been dealt by the organisations
that have given us the money to try to prevent them happening.
I think the police would be very supportive of the work that we
do and I would suggest the areas we are working in and have been
working in over the last two or three years have seen the number
of paramilitary-style attacks drop dramatically.
Mr Auld: I suppose that term is
an interesting one, "paramilitary-style attacks", because
one of the things that I am very conscious of is that there are
more and more ordinary citizens who are willing to band together
to carry out attacks on individuals who they perceive as causing
trouble in communities, who have nothing to do with paramilitary
groups but who are frustrated individuals who are taking the law
into their own hands.
Q389 Mr Beggs: Will the Criminal
Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2004 (allowing courts to impose
heavier sentences when an offence is aggravated by religion, race,
sexual orientation or disability) help to combat this kind of
violence?
Mr Winston: Yes and no. The difficulty
in the areas that I live and work in is that some people would
suggest that the police have obligated their responsibilities
and therefore the community turns to the paramilitaries to act
out on their behalf. The type of offences that we would be dealing
with are minor offences like vandalism, petty theft, things of
that nature, which is high up the list of priorities for the community
but may not be so high up the list of the police's priorities.
Whether there should be more emphasis put on policing the areas
is another question. I think that should happen and I think it
would have the support of the community if that did happen. Whether
for political reasons or other scurrilous reasons the police do
not act for certain individuals, but that needs to be taken very
seriously.
Mr Auld: The Criminal Justice
Act will have a very limited impact. I am basing that on the fact
that we dealt with 43 cases involving those headings over the
last year out of a total of just over 1,100. It will have a small
impact.
Q390 Reverend Smyth: I would like
to look at the question of those who are involved in what are
called `hate crimes'. Are they sectarian victims of the wider
Northern Ireland scene, or can we say that the sectarian conflict
is over and that current sectarian attacks are actually individualised
`hate crimes', particularly bearing in mind what you said, Mina,
about these being pay back crimes?
Ms Wardle: I see it as neither
one nor the other, but I know that in many cases it is pay back
time. We have seen that big time in our area with some people
losing their lives over it.
Q391 Reverend Smyth: Hate is lying
behind it, is it not, even if it is hate for the person who perpetrated
the offence?
Ms Wardle: Yes. There is a lot
of that and I think it has been widely publicised by the media,
although the media sometimes get that wrong as well. What we find
very strange in our community, and it is becoming more and more
prevalent in our community, is that you ring up the local police
station, if you have got one, and nobody responds. There are old
ladies of 84 years of age ringing up paramilitary organisations
for a response. The policing on the ground has got to multiply
particularly in that area. You cannot phone up a police station—and
I would ask you to try it—and get a crime number. You never
see anybody there. As to your question, there is a bit of both.
Sometimes people want retribution, not restoration and it is difficult
because it is horses for courses, what do people want.
Mr McKimmey: It is very complex.
People will attack somebody for hatred reasons as well. One of
the important things about racism or sectarianism is the idea
of supremacy. People may have the idea that they are not the boss
here any more so they act against that. That must be put into
the equation as well. There is no doubt about it, the dis-effectiveness
of some communities and some groups within those communities is
another dynamic. Hate is another part of that equation. There
is no one answer to the whole thing.
Q392 Reverend Smyth: This is what
we are trying to get at because the harsh reality is that it has
become hate, whether it is for disability or homophobia, and how
are you going to define it as distinct from the actual crime?
That is one of the issues that we are having to examine and why
we are maybe pressing you and trying to get to the bottom of things.
We did say that the paramilitaries are not as active as they were.
Would you say that they are not responsible for any `hate crimes'
at the moment? Is it all just at an individual level now?
Mr Winston: I think it is easy
to blame the paramilitaries for `hate crime'. Mr Clarke was saying
about "the village" area and about people being associated
with a particular paramilitary organisation supposedly having
control over that area, therefore they must be involved in `hate
crime'. My understanding is that that is not the case. My understanding
is that it is certain individuals within that community doing
that. If paramilitaries do what they do best and punish those
individuals for being involved in `hate crime' then there is another
outcry for that. It is a hard nut to crack. If paramilitaries
were policing their community the way certain individuals within
their community want them to do and stamping down on that type
of thing, then that opens another can of worms. I suppose the
easy answer is to phone the police and let them deal with it,
but we are living in Northern Ireland and that is much more difficult
to do than a lot of people understand. A lot of people that do
not live in those communities do not understand that it is not
easy to lift the phone and say that young Joe next door is causing
problems because it puts the emphasis on that individual and it
is difficult to break out of that cycle. Associations like our
own who are trying to do what we can within the communities that
we are living in are not given the tools, we are not given the
recognition by Government and by other funding agencies to help
us tackle that, hence we have to go outside of our country to
try to attract funding in to help us do the job for the young
people that are living within our communities. That is wrong.
That has to change. How does it change? I think it starts with
people like yourselves putting pressure on the Government and
saying that here are organisations who can do their own little
bit but unfortunately they have not got the tools to do it. Everybody
cries about resources. We all know you need resources to do a
lot of things. Prior to us starting up everybody was condemning
punishment violence, saying it is wrong, it should not happen.
We condemned it and said it was wrong, it should not happen and
what we are trying to deliver can take us away from that, but
we never got a penny from government agencies to help us do that
and that is wrong.
Mr McKimmey: I do not understand
why you are emphasising the paramilitaries so much. Most of my
recent work has been in London and I did not deal with any race
inequality in Hackney or the surrounding areas. The systemic problems
in a society of poverty are what you should be looking at. I do
not understand why you are spending all your time on paramilitaries.
Q393 Reverend Smyth: We can understand
that. We have got to probe the issue. Whilst I understand what
Tom was saying, he speaks with authority on the Shankhill, I happen
to represent south Belfast and he is not going to deny that the
party which actually published an election leaflet in Chinese
was also the party that sought to remove a person who actually
wrote an article in Donegal Pass calling upon the folks to clear
out the Chinese from the area.
Mr Winston: Surely that party
should be commended for getting rid of that individual.
Q394 Reverend Smyth: He is still
about, and that is the very point I am making.
Mr Winston: Are you suggesting
that the paramilitary group associated with that party deals with
that individual?
Reverend Smyth: I am saying that it is
quite possible for political parties to do things and to say things—
Chairman: I think we are getting diverted.
Q395 Mark Tami: What is your relationship
with the police? Have you seen any improvements or change in the
way that they are dealing with `hate crime'?
Mr McKimmey: No. The race debate
here and what you are doing is a prime opportunity to do something
really good. You can have the best legislation in the world but
if you do not have enforcement then it is ludicrous. We have had
incitement legislation here for years but it has not been enforced.
There are credibility issues as well. We have to live with it
in this part of the world and deal with it. I cannot see that
there is going to be huge change.
Mr McGuire: It is all right having
the legislation and it is great if it is enforced in an honest
way without any politics coming into it, but all that means is
we will have more people in prison and more people with a criminal
record.
Mr McKimmey: I worked on many
good initiatives in London, with young black kids. Do they have
any more belief in the police? It has gone up slightly but it
has got a long way to go because they have to see good practice
and honest practice.
Mr Winston: Getting back to your
question about how we deal with the police and how the police
deal with us. We have had an on-off relationship with the police
over the last eight years where we have tried to encourage the
police to be more actively involved with our organization, and
certain individuals within the police have done that and taken
risks to do that, but somewhere up that chain of command they
have been stopped at certain levels. Things are changing slowly.
More and more police are getting actively involved with our organisation.
We are dealing with the Northern Ireland Office about trying to
develop that further. Whether the police are doing enough about
`hate crime' is up for debate. If organisations working on the
ground were given the tools to help convince the young people
to desist from getting involved in those offences then surely
we could go further.
Mr Auld: We are in a very similar
position. We have a meeting with the Northern Ireland Office tomorrow
to look at developing a relationship with them and hopefully that
will set the scene for us developing a relationship with the PSNI.
I have no doubt that, should that happen, an active, strong community
working in partnership with an open and accountable police service
is a unique opportunity. We have an opportunity there for a new
emerging police service working with a community that is open
and tolerant and active and wanting to participate in the criminal
justice system and there is an opportunity there to develop a
police service with the community that will make this place a
much safer place to live in. I just hope the opportunity is not
squandered.
Q396 Mr Bailey: What do you think
the Government should be doing that it is not already?
Ms Wardle: I think they should
be listening and I think they should be leading by example, which
is what you are doing today. In about four months' time I will
be able to give you a paper called "Would you listen to them?"
I do not know if they use it in any other part of the world. It
is about how when somebody else is talking somebody else has to
listen. It involved talking to 200 people on every issue that
affects your every day life. We are not going to steer away from
all the contentious issues of policing, racism, homophobia, housing,
the health service, we are going to cover everything that any
of you have to cover in Westminster and we will produce a paper
on that. We have done a programme called "Turning the Tides".
I am going to pay a bit of a compliment to Greater Shankhill here.
Three years ago we took three of their young people who they had
finished with, they were 18 years of age and we started working
with them. We put them into a mediation programme which meant
they had to go to other conflict areas, including Kosovo and we
have got three young gentlemen from the Shankhill of 21 years
of age now and they went with nationalist youths and they are
playing an active role in monitoring the situation in east Belfast
and they are doing that with the Mediation Network. They started
off as slight offenders. Their lives have been turned round because
somebody took the time. There is no point in taking a group of
kids away for a week and bringing them back, that achieves nothing.
We have taught them a new way. Initially Greater Shankhill had
begun that process and then handed them over. I think it is good
you know, when you hand them over, there is another programme
that they will benefit from, which they have done. They have been
great ambassadors for Northern Ireland.
Chairman: That is very encouraging to
hear and a happy note on which to end. Thank you very much indeed
for your help.
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