Abstract
This paper offers a “human rights"‐based critique of the Patten Report's proposals for fundamental changes to the landscape of policing in Northern Ireland. While acknowledging the imaginative programme for reform that it offers, the Report nonetheless suffers from two related drawbacks. First, despite the volume of evidence it considered, by focusing on proposed changes, it fails to make an adequate case for the actual necessity of those very changes. As such, a valuable opportunity to reflect the differential policing experiences of different individuals and groups has been lost. Second, it fails to deal adequately with the issue of past human rights abuses commited by RUC officers, documented by a wide variety of organisation over the years. Given the report's (often implicit) reliance on a human rights framework, this is a significant omission. The paper concludes with an analysis of the role that the human rights paradigm can play in promoting changes in policing.
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