Part I – the role of citizenship and the nature of exclusion

The inclusionary/exclusionary nature of citizenship both reflects and causes political instability, insecurity and conflict in many places. A continuing State prerogative to frame who is or is not deserving of the particular entitlements of citizenship and what security for those citizens entails must, therefore, be problematised on many levels in a world where the twin veils of territorial integrity and political sovereignty have now been pierced (for good and ill) so many times as to rend asunder any pretension that these must be accepted as givens in the modern legal landscape. State drawing of boundaries for human inclusion and exclusion has been deconstructed and found wanting by many critical legal discourses from Marxist to feminist theory (e.g. Matthews, Reference Matthews1994) and beyond (UNDP, 2003; OECD, 2005). Conceptualising and exploring how notions of citizenship and security are arrived at and sustained is one avenue to understanding how and where political expediency and discriminatory agendas may be permitted to masquerade as legitimate State prerogative in relation to particular people in particular territories at particular times.

A key site where some of the contradictions and tensions of citizenship and security models can be seen to play out is with respect to the purported goal of rehabilitating offenders and turning them into ‘good’ citizens. An important vantage point from which to view and analyse precisely this phenomenon is in picking through the debris of a transitional society, as it seeks to leave violent conflict behind and to create stable conditions for an enduring peace. At one level, the turmoil and fragility of such societies may seem to have little to say to more stable democracies in terms of either the rehabilitation of offenders or notions of citizenship. However, it is precisely at the moment when previous givens require to be deconstructed and rebuilt, that an opportunity presents itself for a fuller and more public re-examination of notions such as risk and rehabilitation, offender and citizen than is generally warranted in more stable jurisdictions. Such re-examination can hold the seeds of broader re-appraisals and re-assessments which may have benefit and resonance beyond the almost caricatured democratic failures evident in conflicted and post-conflict spaces.

Part II: citizenship, inclusivity and paramilitary ex-prisoners in Northern Ireland

Before considering fully the value of social citizenship as a means of inclusion, it is necessary to articulate the extent to which discrimination and exclusion per se have always been pertinent to conflicts such as that in Northern Ireland, and have, therefore, been intimately linked to contestations around the nature and value of citizenship as a site of belonging. Addressing issues of exclusion has proven, time after time, the necessary focus of attempts to ‘re-democratise’ such jurisdictions, and the provision of security is intimately linked to this endeavour. Since, in many transitional societies, the issue of exclusion elides into the question of political opposition, the potential for return to violent conflict therefore creates an added incentive to deal with exclusion in transitional societies.

In Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Peace Agreement explicitly identifies the need for ‘parity of esteem’ and, among a range of other provisions, very strong equality protection has been enshrined in legislation in the form of ss. 75 and 76 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 (McCrudden, Reference McCrudden1998/9). The need to maintain the strength of such legislative equality has been seen as paramount by, among others, Northern Ireland Human Rights Commissioners involved in the drafting of a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland. For example, two founding members of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission resigned their positions in 2002, citing, among other concerns that the Commission’s Bill of Rights strategy might impact detrimentally on equality protection already achieved.

Despite these developments, however, several sites of discrimination continue to be cause for concern. For example, individuals who have been convicted of a terrorist related offenceFootnote ³ in Northern Ireland are currently excluded from joining the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). On one reading it might appear democratic anathema to expect anything else. After all, many of these individuals have murdered and maimed on the basis of a political cause. Their actions, in and of themselves, exclude them as welcome candidates for a job aimed at enforcing the very laws they have previously broken. Furthermore, the political nature of their crimes, whether acknowledged or not, sets up its own dynamic, in terms of whether such individuals can be trusted to serve the interests of the State.

However, this article argues that unpacking something of what is tied up in this exclusion may serve a useful purpose in itself which goes beyond notions of individual risk. Viewing exclusion as something which, of its nature, calls to be remedied unless very strong objective and rational indicators exist for differential treatment might indicate that these types of policy decisions are not so unproblematic as might at first appear. Jurisprudence arising from art. 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights is based on the precept that exclusion and differential treatment may not necessarily be bad per se, but in terms of interference with the enjoyment of other rights, any discriminatory treatment requires an objectively justifiable rationale.Footnote ⁴ Even where there is a ‘weighty and legitimate reason which might justify a difference in treatment’, it remains to be ascertained whether the principle of proportionality has nonetheless been violated.Footnote ⁵

This article posits that questions as to what constitutes a ‘good’ citizen and who is an ‘offender’ are best understood as nuanced notions which may continually need to evolve and mutate to meet a multiplicity of competing demands and indicators (Call and Stanley, Reference Call and Stanley2001). In transitional settings, in particular, seemingly straightforward readings and solutions, always problematic at some level, need not and arguably cannot apply. Particularly in transitional societies, ‘offending behaviour’ and ‘good citizenship’ are not easy concepts. Nor can they be construed as applying only to individuals and requiring individual allegiance and diligence. They also impose correlative duties and expectations on governments to act appropriately and to criminalise fairly – including, on occasion, taking cognizance of their own wrongdoing and the effect it, also, can have of turning ‘good’ citizens into ‘bad’, for instance, when citizens feel the need to engage in civil disobedience or to otherwise refuse to obey unjust laws. Similarly, where state security forces are deemed to act in a repressive manner by individuals or particular communities, this can have the effect of turning ‘liberals into illiberals and moderates into extremists’ (Crawhaw et al., Reference Crawhaw, Devlin and Williamson1998, p. 41). Duff argues that exclusion involves both a patient (the excluded) and an agent (the excluder), and that ‘if we are to remedy the exclusion we must. . .attend to what the excluder does as well as to what the excluded suffer; we must ask not only what we (whoever “we” are) can do for the excluded, but about the roles and responsibilities of those who have excluded – who might of course be or include that “we” ’ (Duff, Reference Duff2003, p. 700). Addressing this question takes on an added significance in the transitional context, and provides an opportunity to re-examine the roles and responsibilities of the excluders, and the excluded. The criminal justice system provides an obvious focus for the development of this issue.

For example, as is the case in many conflicted societies, a two-tier criminal justice system was developed in Northern Ireland which essentially created a different arrest, detention and court regime for those suspected of ‘terrorist’ offences. Even when the practice of administrative detention (internment without trial), which itself took place on a highly discriminatory basis ceased in 1975,Footnote ⁶ the judicially supervised regime continued to lack some very basic safeguards for those arrested under ‘emergency’ legislation. Post conflict a number of changes over the past decade have resulted in a closer approximation of the regimes for ‘terrorist’ and ‘ordinary decent criminal’ (ODC) suspects, for example, video and audio recording of interviews, permission for lawyers to be present during interviews, the closing of a number of infamous ‘holding centres’, certain changes to laws on the admissibility of evidence, the diminishment in use of juryless (Diplock) courts, and so on, although remnants of the ‘emergency’ system are still in operation. Alongside these acknowledged differentiations in the set up, police brutality also characterised the regime for many suspected of terrorist-type offences. Official attitudes are succinctly typified by the differential appellations which would lead to substantially different legal and administrative applications depending on whether a person was suspected of being a ‘terrorist’ or an ‘ordinary decent criminal’ – this, at the point where a person was in theory still entitled to the presumption of innocence. Insufficient safeguards throughout the pre-trial process, together with concrete evidence and ongoing allegations of collusion between RUC/PSNI officers and paramilitary groups in offences up to and including murder create further crises of confidence in how the criminal justice system operated during the conflict.Footnote ⁷ So, too, does the recent decision of the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal to quash murder convictions, dating back almost 30 years, against a Sinn Fein political representative and a journalist on the basis there was a ‘distinct feeling of unease’ about the safety of the convictions. (Irish Times, February 2007). That these two men – Raymond McCartney and Eamonn McDermott – would not have been permitted to join the police service in Northern Ireland on the basis of these convictions alone, despite the fact, that Mr McCartney has been permitted to stand for public office and is, indeed, an elected member of Northern Ireland’s Legislative Assembly, clearly demonstrates the need to dig down deep in re-examining the role of the excluder, as well as the excluded in post-conflict societies.

This brief cameo serves to illustrate some of the various layers and dynamics which must be factored into notions of citizenship and entitlement in transitional societies. It also points to the importance, post conflict, of very carefully interrogating both the stated need to exclude certain parts of the populace from full access to citizenship and the potential effects which arise from differential treatment. This must involve an assessment in terms of whether the action proposed is not only legal, but also the extent to which it is both necessary and proportionate in terms of minimum standards of fair treatment and equal rights. Beyond this, it is suggested that a default position of inclusion should be adopted as the starting point from which to conduct such assessments.

This is difficult because, for many, exclusion may serve a positive role in affirming the gravity of wrongdoing and hurt caused by paramilitaries, which continues to impact on an individual and societal level beyond the conflict. However, the fact of being beyond the conflict in itself requires that the issue of exclusion be re-examined. In many transitional societies, those convicted of terrorist related offences still face political, social or economic exclusion from broader societal structures that characterised their exclusion prior to imprisonment, and so they may still not receive the social, welfare and economic goods nowadays associated with full citizenship. The dangers of living without the protections afforded by full citizenship are manifold. First, an inability to access the rights of citizenship may well mean that individuals will not feel compelled to exercise the obligations of citizenship or respond to the voice of law. Given that pre-existing hostilities to law and legal structure are often already present, an exclusion from citizenship may serve to compound these hostilities. Secondly, Hillyard et al. have identified a clear link between poverty and conflict which demonstrates the need to link conflict resolution strategies with a recognition of the causes of social and economic exclusion and efforts to resolve those problems (Hillyard et al., Reference Hillyard, Rolston and Tomlinson2005). Thirdly, since, in Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement promises efforts towards the integration of paramilitary ex-prisoners, a failure to ensure full and inclusive citizenship for ex-prisoners is a failure to fulfil this promise. Continued exclusion also fails to recognise any constructive role ex-prisoners may play in rebuilding society and provides further fuel for conflict. Ultimately, therefore, the failure to develop an inclusive model of citizenship in a transitional society, where conflict was in part premised on, at the very least, perceptions of inequality and exclusion, and to make good the political necessity to integrate paramilitary ex-prisoners, or demobbed former combatants of whatever hue, means that efforts to resolve the conflict are likely to encounter significant difficulties.

Part III: thinking through the implications

And so we return to the particular exclusion of paramilitary ex-prisoners from the police – and the extent to which such exclusion is either warranted or desirable in a transitional society. At its most basic, the question requires the unpacking of notions of power, rights and privilege in conflicted and post-conflict societies. This necessitates thinking about what policing is to people and the degree to which rehabilitation, citizenship and transition are all tied up in unravelling this conundrum. The question – can or should ex-paramilitaries be allowed to join the police is actually a key site for a focus on a range of much broader questions as to the type of society we want and need. It focuses our attention very acutely on the way power politics play out and the acknowledged need, in transitional societies at least, to try to undercut dominant paradigms and give space for other experiences to breathe and be heard.

For democracy to function properly Aristotle argued that measures should be taken which will give all people lasting prosperity. This accords with our focus to date on the need for a model of citizenship which recognises the power and potential of socio-economic entitlement. However, at the point where socio-economic meets political and civil, the specific interface conjured up by the notion of former prisoners taking part in policing, the socio-economic model potentially meets its nemesis or at least reaches the boundaries of its utility. Here it appears not, of itself, to be a sufficient model, albeit proving useful to an extent in terms of facilitating peace through challenging the political and civil as the key site of conflict and positing the socio-economic as a different locus for conflict resolution.

At this point, all aspects of citizenship need to be reintegrated to facilitate a more holistic discussion. And so, defining prosperity and linking it into meanings and understandings of security and participative democracy becomes necessary. So too does interrogating whether State interpretations of what is necessary post conflict, while failing to recognise and acknowledge the structural failings of State, instead produces responses geared to the ‘othering’ of individuals and groups when what is actually required is to impact on structural manifestations and causes of insecurity and criminality. which might necessitate asking different questions to begin with.Footnote ²⁰

At an international level, re-imagining security as intimately linked into freedom from fear and want has already begun (UNDP, 2003).Footnote ²¹ According to the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD, 2005):

This provides a useful starting point for critiquing any assumption that policing, which needs to be constructed and nurtured post conflict, is tied up with narrow notions of regime protection or state security which do not take broader issues of the well-being of the populace and their right to freedom from want and fear into account.

Exclusion or inclusion of former paramilitary prisoners can allow the continued privileging of a narrative where State rather than people is deemed to be the entity most deserving of protection and where all evil is projected into what is ‘anti-State’.Footnote ²² This permits the cementing of a State discourse of denial around the extent to which it has done wrong in terms of the conflict and in terms of failing to provide security for the people under its jurisdiction. In reality States in conflicted societies may create not just the physical architecture of incarceration, but also, through failed strategies and too narrow and exclusive a focus, assist in the construction of violent mentalities and imprisoning cycles of violence prior to, during and after the conflict.

Excluding former paramilitary prisoners from state policing serves to perpetuate a fairly militaristic, state centred and masculine understanding of what policing and security is, while reserving to the State the prerogative of who it considers acceptable to undertake that function. Similarly, the inclusion of male paramilitary prisoners may, without further analysis and broadening out of agendas, do the same. Either will be problematic to the extent that it perpetuates the same narrow focus on State understandings of conflict and masculinised understandings of security which have already permitted the issue of sectarianism and state policing to dominate peace negotiations and reform processes to the exclusion of other interests. This can be avoided if the same mentality which might allow of the inclusion of alienated men in policing institutions and processes, were able to grasp that promoting the redistribution of power and the construction of sustainable and democratic political procedures, also provides opportunities for advancing gender and other forms of equality.Footnote ²³

Duff has argued that criminal law can operate as a powerful instrument of exclusion but also – in practical and symbolic terms – of inclusion. ‘In its content and administration, it can be used to secure, and to communicate in a very public way, the citizenship of groups and individuals who might otherwise find themselves excluded or insufficiently recognized’ (Reference Duff2003, p. 710). Tom Hadden (Reference Hadden2006, p. 5) makes a similar point in relation to criminal justice initiatives being important loci for ‘integration with diversity’ on the basis that effective criminal justice is achieved most appropriately through policies of integration rather than autonomy (UN, 2004).

There is clearly a need in any society (and particularly one suffering the degree of instability and fragility that characterises the transitional context) for criminal justice systems to be, and to be seen to be ‘effective’. Effectiveness is linked into the provision of a sufficient degree of public safety while ensuring that the human rights and dignity of all are protected in the process. Call and Stanley (Reference Call and Stanley2001) talk of effective policing as being predicated on protecting individuals from criminal threats, respecting individuals’ rights, and protecting vulnerable groups regardless of ethnicity or political orientation. Adleman et al. make the point that: ‘the degree to which majority social institutions, including the police, succeed in [the] task of acknowledging cultural identities remains open for debate, although critical, race and feminist socio-legal scholars have indicted democratic legal systems for relying on elite, white, middle class, masculine standards of needs and rights, falsely presented as neutral in intent, application and outcome’ (Adleman et al., 2003, p. 108). A key site to test this effectiveness post conflict is in approaches to issues of violence against women, and whether the domestic violence seen not to be a priority during high political conflict now comes to be recognised as indicative of a much deeper and structural malaise which must be addressed (Adelman et al., Reference Adelman, Erez and Shalhoub-kevorkain2003, p. 125).Footnote ²⁴ The sanctioning of certain forms of behaviour, the imposition of certain forms of order, and the privileging of certain needs and expectations over others must, therefore, be interrogated with these joint ends in mind. For example, of the 11 recent peace accords which have included provision for police reform, the majority have made provision for the need to integrate former combatants into new state policing structures (Call and Stanley, Reference Call and Stanley2001, p. 152).

Much of the literature around policing speaks of the clear benefits to the effective administration of criminal justice of having a police organisation that is reflective of the society it serves in terms of its own membership. Even where community policing is embraced as a strategy, police awareness of the ‘diverse and multicultural perspective of communities remains a blind spot in most policing’ (Buntman and Snyman, Reference Buntman and Snyman2003, p. 220). Co-operation with and acceptance of the criminal justice system is more easily achieved when vulnerable and alienated groups identify with the police and see themselves reflected in the make up of the organisation.Footnote ²⁵ Call and Stanley (2002) further make the point that this inclusive and rights oriented approach can prevent members of excluded groups from turning to ‘alternative, ethnically-based mechanisms to provide security’ and can create ‘a positive climate even when broader political arrangements are uncertain or less than democratic’. Inclusion in policing organisations has symbolic as well as practical significance in a transitional society, as a means of creating inclusion where there has previously been exclusion, and broad acceptance of State legitimacy where previously this has been lacking.

Citizenship within this dynamic is, historically and currently, an important component in making effective the promise of human rights protection (Goldston, Reference Goldston2006) and securing State legitimacy. Goldston (Reference Goldston2006, p. 321) argues, however, that ‘at a conceptual level, citizenship’s very contribution to cohesion for those who belong to a political community may simultaneously engender division and even hostility towards those left outside’. Even to the extent that exclusion is merely symbolic,Footnote ²⁶ this equally has the potential to create further hostility from those left outside – something which has clear potential to derail any nascent peace process and default on the ‘parity of esteem’ promise inherent in human rights protection.

The transitional moment is a time-limited opportunity to transform and develop new models and new thinking. Unfortunately, in many cases, institutional reform can too easily turn into tinkering at the edges of problems, resulting in the replication of much that was wrong with former systems. Rather than assume that those with criminal convictions can rarely, if ever, be an asset to the criminal justice system, the question, posed from a default position of inclusivity, requires a more fundamental thought process and a deeper engagement with transitional issues in terms of their ultimate sustainability and peacebuilding potential. The need to establish real and objective justification for exclusion can lead to a questioning of the motives and agendas of those who make the policy decisions in this regard, which in turn raises deeper and more fundamental questions about legitimacy, identity and belonging. Whatever governance structure exists in a post-conflict setting, its success is likely to be tied up with its ability to recognise and demonstrate both the need for and the potential of equality proofing its decision making processes at every level.

As regards the test case for this article, effective equality impact assessments, such as those currently required under s. 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 (McCrudden, Reference McCrudden1999), should be carried out before decisions are made. These should not just consider issues of possible detrimental impact on a particular group, before proceeding down the traditional non-discrimination route of asking whether, nonetheless, a legitimate aim was being pursued and finally, if the aim is legitimate, whether this particular differential treatment is sufficiently proximate to the achievement of that aim to categorise the disproportionate effect as not only necessary but also proportionate to the aim pursued. The decision-making process should also ensure space for the full and proactive consideration of the question: what could the inclusion of this group (former paramilitaries) in this process (policing) do for and lend to a new society? Equally, the adoption of the UN Security Resolution 1325 test is pertinent in this assessment in terms of questioning how this particular piece of legislation or policy will affect and encourage the participation of women.Footnote ²⁷

In the case of Northern Ireland, the inclusion of republican ex-prisoners, particularly now that Sinn Féin, the main nationalist/republican political party, has signed up to official policing arrangements for the first time,Footnote ²⁸ could serve to dilute the Protestant and British culture which defined the Royal Ulster Constabulary and persists to some degree in the PSNI as still, despite its policies of ‘50:50 recruitment of Catholics and Protestants’ and a ‘neutral working environment’, very much a part of the British policing family. The inclusion of former prisoners who are now in their middle years, could also open up the issue of lateral entry and whether the different experiences and skills on offer from society require to be conducted in other ways from the normal recruit induction channel. As one female paramilitary ex-prisoner recently pointed out at a seminar in Belfast on policing, the principle remains at stake that policing should be representative of all sectors of society and should be open to any age or viewpoint as a potential employment choice. This in itself would contribute to the promotion of a more inclusive ethic into an organ of state that requires to be inclusive and impartial. Jackson and Sunshine’s (Reference Jackson and Sunshine2006) research on public confidence in policing being dependant on a public view that police are representative of community values and morals and the importance of moral identification with the police provides further support for this view, while also hinting at shades of discontent that might equally be aroused by the inclusion of those deemed morally unacceptable to a section of the community.

As this article has argued, the current exclusion of ex-prisoners suggests that only ‘good’ citizens can be in the police and, as such, prejudges the issue of what constitutes a ‘good’ citizen (or even a citizen) and what constitutes a ‘good’ state. This is particularly problematic in transitional societies, where serving police officers may well have been involved in human rights abuses during the conflict without ever being held to account: the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland was loathe to prosecute, much less convict police officers for offences carried out on duty. Similarly, it seems counterintuitive that, in Northern Ireland, a number of paramilitaries would be eligible for service, despite having committed similar crimes to their contemporaries, on the basis that they have never been prosecuted. The position becomes even less tenable when it is considered that police officers may also sustain criminal convictions without being discharged from service (Belfast Telegraph, December 2006).Footnote ²⁹ Flowing through all of this, is the sense in which projecting all that is evil into former prisoners allows for deflection from the fact that the State was very much an actor in the conflict and engaged in its own dirty war in which its agents were prepared to collude with and protect serial killers as a key part of their counter insurgency strategy (PONI 2007).

These issues all engage a certain degree of fluidity in transitional spaces. Law, which in and of itself has been damaged throughout the conflict, cannot proceed in linear fashion to cast right and wrong in equal measure as between various actors at the point where the conflict has come to some kind of end (Teitel, Reference Teitel2000). Where, in transitional spaces, law seeks to exclude, it must be very clear how and why that degree of exclusion is warranted. Otherwise, a corollary of that exclusion might also be that law excludes itself from obtaining the degree of rehabilitation and respect it requires from all sections of a divided community in order to provide the normative framework necessary to establish an enduring peace.

Experience in other jurisdictions suggests that notions of blame, rehabilitation and citizenship in the new order may well need to play out through the development of a range of multi-faceted options which do not seek to posit all blame or all badness on one side of the conflict or another. Choices in respect of policing may involve anything from complete disbandment of the force that policed the conflict (as in Uganda, Namibia and Ethiopia) and the creation of new structures to which former police may or may not be permitted to apply, to reforming existing institutions with or without a degree of amnesty (as in Chile and South Africa) for former perpetrators of abuse, and possibly including lustration (as used in a number of Eastern European jurisdictions) and vetting processes (as in Haiti) aimed at purging or screening out elements and individuals deemed insufficiently geared towards effective and acceptable policing of the new order. Many jurisdictions, such as El Salvador and South Africa, have chosen to permit former combatants to join these new structures in smaller or larger numbers, with on occasion a quota set aside to ensure their recruitment in sufficient numbers to rehabilitate/render acceptable both themselves and the institutions they are joining.

The need for just this fluidity in order to construct and embed a newer and better democracy must equally address the question of the extent to which State should be considered ‘good’ enough to own the police and to continue to exercise such a degree of definitional power within a community brutalised by past incarnations of just that type of power. It is at this point in transitional societies that the debate could usefully be opened much more widely than is generally the case. Rather than take as a given that policing is something which belongs to and should be constituted to protect notions of State, a range of options require to be considered as regards, not just the police as institution but policing as process. A gendered lens through which to view notions of security, policing and transformation is rarely applied but much warranted in transitional societies to get to the base of what security is and who needs to be protected and how that might best occur. Similarly, indigenous, traditional or non-traditional approaches to conflict resolution may provide useful avenues of exploration and inclusiveness in some societies. Restorative justice and community-based alternatives to policing also feature quite strongly in some transitional spaces in terms of redefining power relations and administering effective process. It is also the case that a range of informal and formal manifestations of policing are too frequently ignored as they exist parallel to state policing or, in some cases, supersede it both in terms of numbers and power base, while lacking any real system of regulation (Call Reference Call2000).Footnote ³⁰ Focusing too exclusively on State police institutions in such contexts misses both the need to ensure these parallel structures operate according to principles of inclusiveness and the protection of human dignity, while harnessing the potentially transformative power of any or all of them to provide broader sites of belonging and healing for previously marginalised communities.

Ensuring that the State police is as inclusive, representative and responsive to community needs as possible, is one way to avoid too many problematic species of policing, up to and including vigilantism, co-existing and vying for space in the political power vacuum which opens up during transition.

At the same time, to allow largely male ex-paramilitaries to join the police might seal the fate of policing as destined to be macho, bureaucratic, hierarchical and force-centred – clearly something which should be problematised and contested in a society which has seen the Rule of Law distorted by just such structures in the name of fighting terrorism. Whereas former prisoners are by no means a monolith and many will have moved and grown through past involvement in violence which they do not now countenance or espouse, there may be an element with macho tendencies who have enjoyed their experience of power and seek to retain or reinvent it. This point is made quite strongly by Monica McWilliams (Reference McWilliams2006), currently Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and recent work of Paddy Hillyard and Amy Maguire (Reference Hillyard and Maguire2006) in terms of increased levels of domestic violence in post conflict contexts such as Northern Ireland and Lebanon, where men may feel displaced in both society and their homes and continue to use violence in the domestic context (see e.g. Fitzsimmons, Reference Fitzsimmons2000). In these circumstances, because the patriarchy of conflict will have played out at different levels – in and outside the state, cementing the paramilitary patriarchy and infusing it into an already damaged and arguably ineffective institution is not unproblematic.

Broader questions therefore also need to consider whether this move in a particular context might be more likely to foster than prevent the continuation or creation of new and more insidious links into vigilantism, kangaroo courts and other forms of criminality, racketeering and corruption. Similarly, the extent to which the issue of violence against women will be factored effectively into policing realities may or may not be served by the incorporation of largely male paramilitaries into state or other policing apparati. These considerations will obviously depend on the particular individuals and institutions involved, but clearly demonstrate the necessity for some form of screening and vetting process and reform assurance mechanisms which are not gender blind.

Can a brutalised and brutalising state be rehabilitated by the incorporation of elements which have also in their own way brutalised rule of law paradigms? How easy would it be for former paramilitaries to leave the baggage of paramilitarism behind in terms of creating a new politics and a new policing? Do current policing structures lend themselves to rehabilitation in this way? So the question becomes not just can paramilitaries be rehabilitated sufficiently to join the police, or by the process of joining can their rehabilitation be partially effected? Equally, if not more important is the extent to which the police organisation and policing itself requires to be rehabilitated to warrant their wanting to join – or can actually be rehabilitated by virtue of their joining and the dynamic that that will bring in terms of fully inclusive and gender aware policing – which turns full circle back to what we want from policing in the first place.

What policing is and who owns it reinserts itself as a key dynamic in all of this. It must be recognised that, as with citizenship itself, there is something in the nature of policing and the police systems that we have set up which tends towards hegemony and homogeneity. This operates on a number of levels and must be addressed at each of them:

1. 1. Socio-economic models of citizenship are useful to approach this issue in a very basic way as part of an employment sector.

2. 2. Equally, socio-economic citizenship focus can prove useful in a more nuanced way engaging part of an employment sector which has traditionally tended to provide a wage and a degree of power to only one section of the community.

3. 3. In a further problematised way, policing as emblematic symbol of state and citizenship require further aspects of citizenship to be superimposed on the socio-economic focused framework.

4. 4. In a generally unspoken and less visible way, policing as a bastion of dominant paradigms and power politics which excludes not just ex-prisoners but a whole range of other aspects of society – women, the marginalised, the ‘radicals and non-conformists’, ‘ethnic minorities’, and so on – requires the concept of citizenship itself to be blown apart.

Reform efforts across the world have tried to make police institutions more diverse, apparently espousing notions of community policing and partnership while still keeping police institutions closely tied to the interests of State, but this article questions whether current or reformed structures can actually contain that diversity, and tends to the view that we need to change our understandings of citizenship and policing, which in turn will require new and more inclusive structures. Thus, the deceptively simple paramilitary prisoner question gives a way into much broader societal questions which variously play out and/or are ignored in transitional settings around the need to reconceptualise and redefine notions of citizenship, and think about who does policing and why.