Research Activities

The members of the Institute, which includes scholars from a range of disciplines, are actively engaged in a wide variety of research including: policing, youth justice and diversion, victimology, sexual abuse and the management of sex-offenders, drug misuse, paramilitary prisoners and ex-combatants, restorative justice, criminology and conflict resolution, transitional justice judiciary and legal profession in transition, right of silence and police powers, prosecution systems, lay and professional adjudication, criminal evidence and a range of other topics.
 
Much of this research is supported by outside grants from bodies such as the ESRC, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Northern Ireland Office, Atlantic Philantropies, Border Action, the Leverhulme Trust, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency and the European Union.
 
The Institute continues to make a significant contribution to research at local, national and international levels  
In July 2007 the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission launched its second report into the imprisonment of women and girls in Northern Ireland - The Prison Within:The Imprisonment of Women at Hydebank Wood 2004-2006. Professor Phil Scraton was principal investigator and with Dr Linda Moore was co-author of both reports. They amounted to the longest independent research project conducted in any European prison. Professor Scraton and Dr Moore gave evidence in February 2007 at the inquest into the death of Roseanne Irvine in prison and to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Inquiry into prison conditions. Echoing criticisms made in the first report and by the Inspectorates, the new report makes 55 recommendations. It was covered extensively in the print and broadcast media, including a special edition of Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence, and drew international academic and policy interest.

Politically-Motivated Former Prisoners and their Families
Professor Kieran McEvoy, Professor Shadd Maruna andBrian Gormally are currently involved in a research project on Politically-motivated Former Prisoners and their Families. Funded by Border Action, the general task of this thematic evaluation involves assessing the activities and achievements of a group of ex-prisoner-led reintegration programmes for politically motivated former prisoners in the border region of Ireland.
 
The main focus of this evaluation will be “to identify and assess the peace and reconciliation outcomes and impacts of these projects”. In particular, each project seeks to achieve the following primary goals:

Seeking the removal of legal, policy and attitudinal barriers to social, economic and political participation. The development of autonomous, ex-prisoner controlled projects, based on the principle of self-help, to promote reintegration.
Improving skills, knowledge and qualifications to assist participation.  It will also examine the personal and family social and psychological needs, developing channels for peaceful social and political activism and developing a leadership role in communities.
The projects aim to offer opportunities for reflection and a critical examination of the past conflict and offer opportunities for engagement with opposed currents of political thought and allegiance.
 
Understanding the Lives of Children and Young People in the Context of Conflict and Marginalisation
In April Dr Siobhán McAlister was appointed Research Fellow on the rights-based research project Understanding the Lives of Children and Young People in the Context of Conflict and Marginalisation under the direction of Professor Phil Scraton. The project, in partnership with Save the Children and The Prince’s Trust, identifies and explores the issues that impact on the lives of children and young people. Central to the community-based research across Northern Ireland will be analysis of how poverty and the conflict have affected and continue to affect the lives and rights of the most marginalised and socially excluded children and young people. 

To date, the research team have carried out preliminary fieldwork with groups of young people to help direct the research focus and spoken with almost 60 community representatives.  They are about to embark on the next phase of the research in which they will speak directly to groups of children and young people (aged 8-25 yrs) within the chosen communities.  It is aimed that the research will gain an understanding of the processes that serve to criminalise and marginalise children and young people in disadvantaged areas most effected by the conflict; highlight areas of effective practice at a community level; inform service delivery and the children’s rights agenda and inform communities through information sharing and taking debate and dialogue about children’s rights to them.
 
Transitional Justice from Below
From 2006 – 2007, Professor Kieran McEvoy, Professor Harry Mika & Kirsten McConnachie were involved in an Atlantic Philanthropies funded project - Transitional Justice from Below. This comparative research project seeks to counterbalance the traditional 'top down' analysis of transitional and post-conflict justice by exploring the work done by community activists and ex-combatants to transform local cultures of violence.  The potentially transformative role of ex-combatants and local communities in transitional justice is also largely overlooked in the accepted contemporary strategies for post-conflict reconstruction and humanitarian development.
Through a combination of research methods, including field work, this project examined transitional justice initiatives 'from below' in South Africa, Rwanda, Colombia, Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland in a comparative analysis of the range and potential for local peacebuilding.
 
The project drew particularly on the experiences and lessons of Northern Ireland in the implementation of community-based restorative justice initiatives to counteract paramilitary punishment violence.
 
Beyond Legalism: Amnesties, Transition and Conflict Transformation
In 2007, Dr Louise Mallinder, Professor Kieran McEvoy and Professor Brice Dickson secured funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to undertake a comparative research project which seeks to develop a ‘thicker’ understanding of the relationship between amnesties and transition from conflict. This project, ‘Beyond Legalism: Amnesties, Transition and Conflict Transformation’ will explore ‘ideal types’ of amnesties, development of a database of amnesty arrangements worldwide and exploration of the intersection between amnesties and international human rights law.  Despite the centrality of amnesties to the process of conflict transformation, to date few studies have focused exclusively on general debates on amnesty laws, as opposed to the wider fields of transitional justice or conflict resolution, and those which have been undertaken have arguably been legalistic, atheoretical and jurisdiction-specific. 
 
As a result, very little existing research is based on extensive fieldwork within transitional states or comparative studies of amnesty laws. This research project seeks to build on the existing literature in order to explore richer and thicker themes in relation to amnesties. In this way, it seeks to move the debate on amnesties ‘beyond legalism’ to consider the phenomenon within the wider political context in which amnesties occur. Through a combination of research methods, including field work, the project will examine amnesty processes in South Africa, Uganda, Argentina, Uruguay and Bosnia-Herzegovina.