Source: (2005) Paper presented at the Police Service of Northern Ireland Conference on Human Rights and Restorative Justice, Belfast, 1 March.
In Northern Ireland, then, community restorative justice projects have been an important
part of the peace process. They have reduced the incidence of punishment violence,
they have engaged ex-combatants in peaceful community activism, they have engaged
thousands of people in practising justice in their neighbourhoods, they have reduced
anti-social crime and they have spread the radical principles of restorative justice. They
are now poised, assuming goodwill on all sides, to form, necessarily gradually and
incrementally, a partnership with the statutory criminal justice system that will fully
express the new social contract that must be the result of a genuine peace process. Is
the Northern Ireland Office prepared to abandon its obstructive position and show the
necessary goodwill? (Excerpt)
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