Sir Ivor Roberts, the British ambassador to Ireland, argues that Prof Brendan O'Leary is wrong about the implementation of the Patten report. Sir Ivor is of the view that the Police Bill "is a faithful reflection of the Patten Report" (The Irish Times, July 29th). I disagree profoundly.
Prof O'Leary's political analysis of the consequences of not fully implementing Patten and his detailed dissection of where Patten has been abandoned (The Irish Times, July 28th) must not be dismissed as "froth".
I wish to emphasise a number of other important areas in which Patten has been watered down or ignored. First, however, it is essential to look again at Patten's core proposal, which has been overlooked in many of the debates which have principally focused on the name and symbols.
Patten recommended a fundamental transformation in the form of policing in Northern Ireland. Instead of the dominant Anglo-American model of policing as a specialised monopoly function of the state, Patten argued for a dual system in which policing is a function of both the state and local communities.
As one of the commissioners, Prof Clifford Shearing, has expressed it elsewhere, what is involved here is "a network of intersecting regulatory mechanisms" in which policing becomes "everybody's business".
On this model, the government operates indirectly, seeking the participation of non-state agencies, private organisations and individuals and devolves responsibility for crime and security to them. The model recognises that the sovereign state, as we enter the 21st century, can no longer satisfy the variety of popular demands for security.
This model of policing, with neighbourhoods at the centre, naturally has far-reaching structural and other implications for a counter-insurgency, hierarchical police force such as the RUC. In practice, policing has to be decentralised to much smaller units, the management style has to be open, transparent and delegated, and every level of policing has to be democratically accountable to local neighbourhoods.
At the same time, the form of policing has to be far less reactive and much more geared to problem-solving and crime prevention in conjunction with a range of other agencies. Above all, the police service has to be representative of the communities it serves.
The Police Bill, although amended in some important respects by the House of Commons, still fails to implement this model of policing in three main areas.
First, the Bill assigns far too much power to the Secretary of State and the Chief Constable and too little to the Police Board. In particular, there are too many restrictions before the board can initiate inquiries into police conduct.
The Chief Constable can object to an inquiry in a number of circumstances: in the interests of national security; if the matter relates to an individual and is of a sensitive, personal nature; or because it may prejudice the detection or prevention of crime or a case proceeding through the courts. The Secretary of State can then deny an inquiry on any of the above grounds or if "it would serve no useful purpose".
The current Bill fails what may be called the "Stalker Test". It will be recalled that Mr John Stalker, while deputy chief constable of greater Manchester, was appointed in 1984 to investigate three separate shootings by the RUC. If this Bill had been law then, the Chief Constable could have opposed the investigation on at least two of the four grounds and it would have been difficult for the Secretary of State not to support the Chief Constable's objections.
Second, the Bill fails to implement a number of Patten's recommendations concerning his core idea that policing should be decentralised to local neighbourhoods. He argued that local government, local police and local policing partnership board boundaries should be coterminous in order to strengthen the relationship between the police and "an identifiable community".
Therefore, he proposed that the District Policing Board for Belfast should have four sub-groups, covering north, south, east and west Belfast. The new Bill provides only that Belfast will have up to four police districts - the Chief Constable is left to determine both the number and the area and there is no provision for the principle that all policing districts should be coterminous with district councils.
Patten also recommended that district councils should have the power to contribute towards improved policing of a district. This stemmed from the notion that security is a public good, not a commodity, and should be available to everyone. The better off have always been able to purchase this good privately. As a result, public safety has increasingly been distributed on the basis of class.
Patten's proposal for district policing partnership boards to buy in extra policing would reduce the inequalities in security provision and also provide an opportunity for the democratic control of this public good rather than leaving it, as at the moment, to local vigilantes or the market. The government has rejected the idea for the moment.
Third, Patten recommended that policing must be transparent and open. He argued that everything should be available for public scrutiny unless it was in the public interest - not in the police interest - to hold it back. The Bill fails to implement this principle and makes no statutory provision for the publication of such basic information as the use of police powers and their outcome or circulars on police procedures and policies.
Instead, policing in Northern Ireland is to be subject to the Freedom of Information Bill, which specifically excludes public access to most documents relating to policing and the administration of justice.
Hopefully, this detailed exegesis will go some way to convince Sir Ivor that whatever he may have been told by the Northern Ireland Office or Mr Mandelson, the Police Bill does not "faithfully reflect" Patten. It needs to be radically amended in the House of Lords.
Paddy Hillyard is Professor of Social Administration and Policy at the University of Ulster
