Leading in Liminal Space: The Challenge of Policing in Northern Ireland

Abstract

This chapter draws together the current challenges faced by police leadership in Northern Ireland. These difficulties focus on both the past and the present, and it is argued that their existence is holding the police and police leaders in Northern Ireland in a liminal space between conflict and peace. A number of issues are of particular relevance. The first is the incomplete nature of the police’s own change programme and the absence of culture change at an organisational level. Allied to this is the need for the PSNI to actively create its own identity—distinctive from the RUC past and encompassing an inclusive reflection of Northern Ireland and its place in the wider world. The second is the challenge of ‘policing the past’ with the resource implication and political dangers that such a process represents. The third is the particular challenges of the current Northern Ireland political landscape: suspension of devolved institutions, austerity and Brexit.