A young father left with no legs, an elderly mother mourning a son, teenagers hobbling on crutches. Distressing images associated with so-called punishment attacks in the North have become all too familiar over the years.
Recent high-level political pressure may now be starting to have an effect, but at ground level in the mainly working-class republican and loyalist areas where the attacks generally occur, developments are taking place which, it is hoped, could prove more effective in the long-term.
Four pilot projects aimed at finding new ways of dealing with low-level crime and based on the concept of "restorative justice" have started in Belfast and Derry. There, the view that punishment attacks are acts of barbarism carried out by paramilitary thugs determined to keep a stranglehold on fearful communities is generally dismissed.
One of the projects is in the Brandywell in Derry, where a committee has been formed and initial training completed. As with the other schemes in two nationalist areas of west and north Belfast and on the Shankill Road, the Brandywell project is supported by the Northern Ireland Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NIACRO).
The co-ordinator of the Brandywell project, Mr Paddy O'Carroll, says the initiative started with efforts two years ago to tackle the problem of youngsters setting off bangers at Halloween.
"The question was asked as to how we could get a system to tackle these problems, because they weren't being tackled by the RUC or the informal system - the IRA or whatever," he says.
At the same time in Belfast, members of NIACRO and other professionals with an interest in criminal justice systems were exploring ways of applying the restorative justice principle to the North. Mr O'Carroll says it was generally felt in the Brandywell and Bogside that a vacuum existed after the IRA ceasefire.
Ms Roisin Barton, another member of the committee, became directly involved last year when a colleague from the local women's group came to her for help. The woman's 15-year-old son, and four others, had been ordered out of Derry by the IRA. She said they had no close relatives anywhere else and that because of her son's age, the whole family would have to leave. Ms Barton, who had already at tended local meetings on community justice, then went to the IRA. "I said if they were serious about stopping beatings, then ordering people out of the town couldn't be the only alternative."
However, she was also convinced after talking to the IRA that something had to be done about the teenagers' behaviour. "It was more than just being a nuisance. They were terrorising people. Old people were afraid to come out of their houses."
While outsiders might question why anybody should have to discuss such an issue with the IRA, Ms Barton, a 50-year-old mother of six children, doesn't. "They are very much part of this community - for years they were the only people we could turn to. It was the RUC who were committing crimes against this community. I am not in favour of punishment beatings, but that is not to say I didn't accept them. I did, and probably a few years ago I was a lot more in favour of them," she adds.
The restorative justice approach is psychologically light years from the old ways. Anti-social behaviour is seen as a break down in community relation ships. It aims to get the offender to acknowledge the hurt caused and to take responsibility for his actions, to support victims and give them the opportunity to have their say, and to reintegrate the offender into the community. This way the offender is made accountable to his community, but doesn't end up feeling he is the victim, as often happened after punishment attacks.
Mr Donnie Sweeney of NIA CRO in Derry says the intention is not to provide an alternative to the criminal justice system but to complement it, and that this model has been used effectively in other countries. "The community crime we are looking to address is the kind of crime that police forces around the world are particularly ineffective at dealing with anyway." There was a recognition by the community in the Brandywell, he says, that both the formal and informal systems were ineffective. While the RUC has some involvement in the Shankill project, the Brandywell community did not want this.
The bottom line of the restorative justice approach is that there is no violence or threat of violence. Everything takes place voluntarily. "The dynamic of bringing the victim and the offender together is underestimated," he says.
Meetings have been held to keep statutory agencies informed and a further conference is taking place tomorrow. Sceptics may be critical of the involvement of republicans and loyalists in the projects. Martin McGuinness, writing in The Irish Times last month, indicated that Sinn Fein deserved credit for setting them up, and said anybody interested in ending punishment attacks and reducing petty crime should support them. His brother is a member of the committee in the Brandywell. All 10 members were selected at a public meeting.
Paddy O'Carroll says that while he is a former republican prisoner, this does not in any way relate to what he's doing now. "We are trying to keep politics out of it," he says.
Mr Declan Kearney, the manager of the Brandywell and Bog side Initiative, says that there is "an indisputable mandate from the people" for the project. Thirty-two different groups affiliated to the BBI have all supported it.
"The whole process has been open, transparent and inclusive. Every house was leafleted and I lost count of the number of meetings that have been held over two years. There has been debate, but I haven't heard a single dissenting voice."
The RUC is unacceptable to people in the area and he hopes the Patten commission on policing "will learn from some of the creativity and foresight that is being applied here".
"We don't have a system of justice which people can subscribe to. It is neither relevant nor meaningful to them," Mr Kearney says. Community forums with wide representation may be used in the future. As with all community projects, it will find its own levels and capacity.
The Brandywell project, while only starting, has at least one success story. The five teenagers who were ordered out of town by the IRA were allowed to stay after agreeing to rethink their behaviour in a series of meetings with committee members and youth leaders. They had to abide by a nightly curfew and volunteered to paint a mobile shop, where they had been causing trouble in the past. Their parents were also actively involved.
"What came out of the discussions was that these young people had no sense of self-worth. They got up in the morning, had nothing to do and had no interest in anything. Now, on a scale of one to 10, their level of crime has fallen from 10 to two," says Paddy O'Carroll.