A lavishly illustrated history of policing in Northern Ireland.

This book provides an account and analysis of policing in Northern Ireland, providing an account and analysis of the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) from the start of 'the troubles' in the 1960s to the early 1990s, through the uneasy peace that followed the 1994 paramilitary ceasefires (1994-1998), and then its transformation into the Police Service of Northern Ireland following the 1999 Patten Report. A major concern is with the reform process, and the way that the RUC has faced and sought to remedy a situation where it faced a chronic legitimacy deficit. Policing Northern Ireland focuses on three key aspects of the police legitimation process: reform measures which are implemented to redress a legitimacy crisis; representational strategies which are invoked to offer positive images of policing; and public responses to these various strategies. Several key questions are asked about the ways in which the RUC has sought to improve its standing amongst nationalists: first, what strategies of reform has the RUC implemented? second, what forms of representation has the RUC employed to promote and portray itself in the positive terms that might secure public support? third, how have nationalists responded to these initiatives? The theoretical framework and analysis developed in the book also highlights general issues relating to the implications of police legitimacy and illegitimacy for social conflict and divisions, and their management and/or resolution, in relation to transitional societies in particular. In doing so it makes a powerful contribution to wider current debates about police legitimacy, police-community relations, community resistance, and conflict resolution.

A brutally honest and controversial book that takes a look behind the scenes of the Police Service of Northern Ireland as well as observing the many unusual quirks associated with Northern Ireland itself. This book is comprehensive and and the reader need not require any prior knowledge of Northern Ireland or its police service.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, University of Tubingen, course: LPS The Northen Irish Troubles, language: English, abstract: In the conflict between Catholic Nationalists and Protestant Loyalists in Northern Ireland the security forces have played and continue to play a controversial and crucial role. Hailed by Loyalists as defenders of Ulster, condemned by Nationalists for their biased, sectarian practices, the police forces were often not mediators between both sides but combatants in the ‘Troubles’ who fueled the conflict. This paper intends to look at the history of policing in Northern Ireland from 1920 to 2001, focusing on the early years in order to show a path-dependency of the ‘Troubles’. It will substantiate that the conflict between the police forces and the population during the ‘Troubles’, beginning in 1968, was not a singular, isolated event that can be examined without its historical context. But rather, the seed of this conflict had been planted fifty years prior, when Northern Ireland’s police forces were established. Chapter 3 looks at the public perception surrounding policing and will examine the differences and similarities of opinion between Catholics and Protestants. Chapter 4 deals with the internal problems facing policing. Furthermore, it will question Seamus Mallon’s, a former deputy leader of the SDLP and Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister from 1998 to 2001, statement that the RUC was “97% Protestant and 100% unionist” (Royal Ulster Constabulary 2006).

'Baghdad Bulletin takes us where mainstream news accounts do not go. Disrupting the easy cliches that dominate US journalism, Enders blows away the media fog of war.' Norman Soloman