Since the early 1970s, extrajudicial punishment attacks have been carried out by Ulster loyalist and Irish republican paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. Attacks can range from a warning or expulsion from Northern Ireland, backed up by the threat of violence, to severe beatings that leave victims in hospital and shootings in the limbs (such as kneecapping). The cause of the attacks is disputed; proposed explanations include the breakdown of order as a result of the Northern Ireland conflict (–1998), ideological opposition to British law enforcement (in the case of republicans), and the ineffectiveness of police in preventing crime.
Since reporting began in 1973, more than 6,106 shootings and beatings have been reported to the police, leading to at least 115 deaths. The official figures are an underestimate because many attacks are not reported. Most victims are young men and boys under the age of thirty, whom their attackers claim are responsible for criminal or antisocial behaviour. Despite attempts to put an end to the practice, according to researcher Sharon Mallon in a 2017 policy briefing, "paramilitaries are continuing to operate an informal criminal justice system, with a degree of political and legal impunity".
Name Although local residents of affected neighbourhoods call the attacks "punishment", this term is controversial. According to historian Liam Kennedy, "Not only has the label 'punishment' a euphemistic quality when applied to extremely cruel practices, it also carries a presumption that the victim is somehow deserving of what he (occasionally she) receives.", cited in . In a 2001 debate in the Northern Ireland Assembly, Alliance MLA Eileen Bell objected to the term "punishment beatings", stating: "The use of the term 'punishment' confers on the act a degree of legitimacy by suggesting that the guilt of a victim is an established fact." According to the Independent Monitoring Commission, the term "punishment beating" "lends a spurious respectability to the perpetrators, as if they were entitled to take the law into their own hands". Other terms used to describe the attacks are "paramilitary-style attacks", "paramilitary policing", and "paramilitary vigilantism".
Background
From the late 1960s to 1998, the Northern Ireland conflict (also known as the Troubles), was a civil war between Irish republican groups, who wanted Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and unite with the Republic of Ireland, and Ulster loyalist groups, who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK. The origin of the conflict occurred during the Irish revolutionary period of the early twentieth century, during which most of Ireland seceded from the UK and became the Irish Free State, while the northern six counties opted to remain under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Republican groups consider themselves the legitimate successor of the Irish Republic of 1919 to 1921. Irish republicans do not recognise the partition and consider ongoing British rule in Ireland to be a foreign occupation. In Northern Ireland, Catholics generally supported Irish nationalism and the unification of Ireland, while Protestants generally supported unionism.
The Provisional IRA was the largest republican paramilitary group, while smaller groups include the INLA and the Official IRA. All three ceased paramilitary activity during the Northern Ireland peace process, which led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the official end of the conflict. Dissident republicans—such as the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA—do not recognise the peace agreement and wage an ongoing campaign. The Ulster Defence Association/Ulster Freedom Fighters (UDA/UFF) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) are rival groups that are responsible for the majority of loyalist murders during the Troubles, while smaller loyalist groups include the Red Hand Commando, and Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). Both republican and loyalist groups consider punishment attacks separate from military activity and continue to carry them out while on ceasefire status.
British troops were deployed in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 2007. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) was an armed force that took a military approach to counter-terrorism, had been drawn into pro-unionist sectarianism, colluded with loyalist groups, and committed police brutality, including beatings of suspects. Real and perceived human rights violations by security forces—including internment without trial, special courts for political offences, the use of plastic bullets by riot police, and alleged shoot-to-kill policy—further sapped the state's legitimacy for nationalists. In many neighbourhoods, the RUC was so focused on terrorism that it neglected ordinary policing, regular patrols, and non-political crime. Both nationalist and unionist communities complained that the RUC did not respond quickly enough to calls relating to petty crime, and that suspects were pressured to inform on paramilitaries. Since the replacement of the RUC with the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in 2001, trust has improved, with more than 70% in both communities having a positive assessment of the PSNI's performance in 2018. However, in many republican neighbourhoods identity has been shaped by distrust of the authorities, with one republican neighbourhood in West Belfast reporting only 35% trust in the police. Since the disbanding of the RUC, trust is decreasing in some loyalist communities.
Origins Irish nationalist movements have a long history of establishing so-called "alternative legal systems", especially the land courts of the Land War and the Dáil Courts during the Irish War of Independence, as a form of resistance to British rule. In Northern Ireland, the "alternative justice" system survived partition and continued into the first years of the Northern Ireland polity. Following partition, loyalist militias patrolled parts of the border with the Irish Free State and, in Belfast, the Ulster Unionist Labour Association set up an unofficial police force in the 1920s.
In the late 1960s, armed loyalists attacked Catholic communities in response to the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. To protect themselves, nationalists set up Citizen Defence Committees (not connected to violent republican groups) which built and manned barricades and patrolled the neighbourhood. The barricades prevented the RUC from entering and created "no-go zones", which lasted for the first ten years of the conflict. In nationalist neighbourhoods of Derry such as the Bogside, Brandywell, and Creggan, these committees worked to control petty crime by delivering stern lectures to the accused. In the 1970s, the Free Derry Police also operated independent of paramilitary groups. "People's courts" which mostly imposed sentences of community service based on a restorative justice approach operated in the early years of the conflict, but shut down due to police intimidation and because they did not have the purported "authority" of "punishment" imposed by paramilitaries. In nationalist Belfast, the Catholic Ex-Servicemen's Association initially played a role in keeping order. At the same time, Protestant neighbourhoods began to organise defence groups in response to retaliatory raids. Such groups formed the basis of the UDA.
The Catholic civil initiatives proved short-lived as they were quickly overtaken by the IRA, a minor player in 1969. Serious sectarian violence and police brutality led Catholics to view the IRA, despite its flaws, as the "guarantor of their safety". At the same time, there was a spike in crime: from two murders and three or four armed robberies each year in the 1960s to 200 murders and 600 armed robberies annually during the next decade. Petty criminals were often offered immunity by law enforcement in exchange for informing on paramilitaries. Many rural areas had a system of dual control between the IRA and the authorities. As the 1970s progressed, the IRA took an increasing and harsher role in punishing alleged offenders within their community, no longer negotiating with accused offenders and their families. Kneecappings were a weekly occurrence in West Belfast by 1975. During the 1975 truce, "Provo Police Stations" were set up by Sinn Féin, the political wing of the IRA. These centres shifted the responsibility of informal justice from the IRA to Sinn Féin. Once a crime had been reported to Sinn Féin, the party would assign its Civil Administration Officers to investigate. Suspects often were given the opportunity to defend themselves before the organisation made a decision on their guilt or innocence. Sinn Féin could issue a warning or pass the information to the IRA for punishment.
Causes One cause of vigilantism is the breakdown in law and order and lack of trust in the authorities. According to anthropologist Neil Jarman, vigilantism emerged in both loyalist and republican areas due to the failings in state policing, a gap which paramilitaries ended up filling. According to sociologist Ronaldo Munck, punishment attacks represent "a sharp contest over the legitimacy of criminal justice within a society deeply divided along ethno-national lines". In republican neighbourhoods, the IRA was the only organisation with the capability to offer an effective alternative to the British judicial system. The ideology of self-reliance in defence of loyalist attacks came to extend to defending the community from crime, which created a cycle where the IRA was expected to deal with criminality but had no way to do so besides violent attacks.
Popular demand for paramilitary punishment is widely regarded as one of the main causes of the attacks. Both republican and loyalist paramilitaries claim that they began to enforce informal justice due to demand from their communities, and vigilantism came at the expense of the IRA's military campaign. Sociologist Heather Hamill argues that in republican areas, the IRA was "a willing and capable supplier" that actively fostered demand for punishment attacks, motivated both by "self-interest in encouraging dependence and loyalty among the local population and a genuine desire... to provide a service to the community".
Many locals believe the victims deserve the attacks because they have typically broken local conventions governing acceptable behaviour and often actively seek out the circumstances that led to their punishment. Some local republican and loyalist politicians have justified the attacks by saying that the official system fails working-class communities which bear the brunt of crime. In community meetings attended by criminologist Kieran McEvoy and sociologist Harry Mika around the turn of the century, the authors frequently encountered "vocal support for punishment violence" and accusations that local politicians who supported restorative justice were "abandoning" their responsibility to protect their communities. In March 2000, an article in Andersonstown News said that the "North Belfast kneecapping squad" could easily win an election.