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The Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland a model agency for managing complaints against police and optimising police integrity 1.83 MB
Published Version (Advanced Access)CC BY-NC-ND V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
The Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland: a model agency for managing complaints against police and optimising police integrity?
Current Issues in Criminal Justice, Vol.37(4), pp.641-660
2025
Appears in UniSC Supported Open Access Outputs
Abstract
This paper addresses the critical issue of independence in police complaints processes through an evaluation of the work of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. Civilian independence from police in handling complaints against police is widely regarded as essential for public confidence in making complaints and for police accountability more generally. The Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland has been widely acclaimed as the closest example internationally of a ‘civilian control’ agency. However, it has been the subject of only limited critique. The aim of this paper is to provide a focused assessment of the performance of the Ombudsman against criteria associated with the civilian control model. Based on available research and reports from the Ombudsman, the main finding is that the Ombudsman appears to have made a valuable contribution to police accountability and better policing in Northern Ireland, primarily through the adoption of key features of the civilian control model. At the same time, some areas of possible improvement were also identified, which could also be applicable in other jurisdictions. These include improving the experiences of complainants, reducing complaints, and coverage of police internal complaints and disclosures.
Details
- Title
- The Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland: a model agency for managing complaints against police and optimising police integrity?
- Authors
- Tim Prenzler (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine CoastMichael MaguireLouise Porter - Griffith University
- Publication details
- Current Issues in Criminal Justice, Vol.37(4), pp.641-660
- Publisher
- Taylor & Francis
- Date published
- 2025
- DOI
- 10.1080/10345329.2025.2517945
- ISSN
- 2206-9542
- Copyright note
- © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Law and Society
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991147040202621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Web Of Science research areas
- Criminology & Penology
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