Paddy Hillyard

Patterns of Policing and Policing Patten

In September 1999 the Independent Commission on Policing in Northern Ireland, chaired by Chris Patten, published its recommendations. This article examines the political context of policing reform, the contents of the report and the rejection of its core ideas in the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill published in May 2000. The central argument of the paper is that the Commissions radical model of policing a network of regulating mechanisms in which policing becomes everyones business failed, because it gave insufficient attention, like much modern writing on policing, to the role of the state and the vested interests within policing. The overall outcome is that the Patten Commission has been effectively policed and Northern Ireland will be left with a traditional, largely undemocratic and unaccountable model of policing with most of the control resting with the Secretary of State and the Chief Constable.

Invoking Indignation: Reflections on Future Directions of Socio-Legal Studies

The Research Assessment Exercise has produced some very unequal results. Lawyers are now three times more likely to be in grade 5 or 5* departments than social policy colleagues. The paper begins with a light-hearted theoretical explanation of these results to make the serious point that an old fashioned notion of power and a simple analysis of the available data can produce important insights into what is happening in the real world - a research paradigm which the RAE has discouraged. The paper then makes a number of criticisms of current theoretical endeavours in sociolegal studies: the confusion over what is meant by theory, its fixation on deconstruction and a Foucauldian notion of power, and the neglect of universal categories. The central argument is that sociolegal studies needs to focus more on the materiality of everyday life and, in particular, the growing inequalities in the world and the role that law and legal institutions play in the structuring of these inequalities. In conclusion, the paper argues that as sociolegal scholars we need to analyse the impact of our decisions on others and to take a stand against unfair and unjust distribution of resources whether at the local, national or international level. We need a vision of a just society which is informed by moral indignation.

Arresting statistics: the drift to informal justice in England and Wales

This paper re-examines some of the current theoretical models and paradigms of criminal justice in England and Wales based on an analysis of national arrest statistics between 1981 and 1997. The data show that there has been a large increase in the number of arrests in the period but the number of people prosecuted has declined. An increasing number of people are being arrested and released without any further action. The principal argument is that there has been a radical shift in power away from the formal open and public system of justice towards a more informal closed system. The paper concludes that while these trends lend support to a number of theoretical perspectives on the criminal justice process, particularly Choonghs social disciplinary model, the radical transformation which has taken place in the form of criminal justice can only be understood within the broader politics and economic structures of modern Britain.