Twenty-five years on the boundary between state and community:revisiting the ‘impossibility’ of restorative justice and security informalism

Once considered ‘impossible’, community-based restorative justice (CBRJ) in Northern Ireland has commanded attention and criticism in equal measure for over twenty-five years. While a necessary focus of the country’s transition from conflict to peace has centred upon state-led security processes, including police reform, wider perspectives related to informal policing have remained on the margins. This paper aims to revisit critiques around the ‘impossibility’ of restorative justice, originally considered by McEvoy and Mika 2002. In doing so, the authors attempt to demonstrate that the values and principles of CBRJ have in fact transcended the highly contested and politicised security environment of Northern Ireland. In turn, the operation of a key CBRJ organisation–Community Restorative Justice Ireland–has not merely been ‘possible’ but has acted as a fulcrum for transforming community capital, re-imagining justice ownership, and moving society away from the cultures of violence long associated with Northern Ireland’s past.