Former paramilitary prisoners released under the Belfast Agreement will be considered eligible to help run state-financed "restorative justice" schemes in Northern Ireland under new British government proposals, The Irish Times has learned.
The move has prompted the Northern Ireland Policing Board to warn London against creating any "precedent" that might later be used to justify changes in the standards and vetting procedures applying to recruits to the PSNI and its reserves.
It also threatens a renewed political battle between British ministers and the SDLP, whose leader Mark Durkan yesterday intensified his opposition to state support for private restorative justice groups while what he calls "the culture of paramilitary control" continues in communities in the North.
While Ministers insist they are right to seek to regulate schemes that already exist and presently operate outside the criminal justice system, the SDLP leadership believes the current proposals would result in increased paramilitary control and the denial of proper standards of policing in working-class communities.
Mr Durkan is certain of support at Westminster from Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman David Lidington.
Just last month, Mr Lidington wrote to Secretary of State Peter Hain, seeking an assurance that people with terrorist convictions or a record of paramilitary involvement would be barred from participation in restorative-justice schemes intended to deal with "low-level crime" of concern in local communities.
In a specific attack on the Community Restorative Justice (CRJ) organisation, Mr Durkan repeated his view that such groups should be denied state funding without proper statutory regulation, training and oversight, and a requirement that they engage "directly" with the police and other statutory agencies.
Following their recent meeting with the North's justice minister, David Hanson, members of the Policing Board appear more confident that the final British proposals would require an automatic and continuing relationship between restorative justice groups and the police.
In its original submission, the board argued that the draft British guidelines published last December seemed intended to allow such groups to effectively "bypass" the PSNI.
Board members have also confirmed unease about a proposal to "contract-out" vetting procedures for the schemes, with the police providing information requested but leaving decisions on the suitability of applicants to an independent oversight body.
Meanwhile, the SDLP leader cited the case of Belfast-man Jeff Commander, who was "savagely attacked in September last year because he was a friend of the late Robert McCartney and supported his family's campaign for justice".
Mr Durkan claimed that a senior member of Community Restorative Justice had witnessed the attack on Mr Commander but so far failed to give "a full and truthful statement to the police", as he is obliged to do by law.
The Irish Times was unable to contact a CRJ spokesman to respond to Mr Durkan's statement.