Can dialogue help police officers and young Black adults understand each other? Key findings from a restorative process in Ireland
Relationships between police forces and minority ethnic communities are often characterised by tension, mistrust and a lack of understanding. It seems unlikely that the solutions lie in traditional approaches to police-community engagement.
This public lecture explores findings from the first research project to use restorative practices to facilitate dialogue between police officers and young Black adults in Europe. This occurred in a part of West Dublin where police officers had recently shot and killed a young Black man. The observational and interview data suggest that the process enabled participants to speak and listen respectfully to each other, and to understand how each other’s experiences shaped their perspectives on policing. This implies that restorative practices are a viable method for enabling this kind of dialogue, providing a space safely to discuss, reflect on and learn from people’s views and experiences of belonging, policing and police-community relations.
The lecture outlines the context in which the work took place, the design of the process itself, and the methods and key findings from the research, including the extent to which the data suggest that understanding was built on either side. Dr Ian Marder will argue that there is sufficient evidence to justify scaling up dialogic processes in this context, however, it remains uncertain how, if at all, the contribution that such dialogues can make to individuals could translate into cultural change at the institutional level, or address underlying structural inequalities.
This research was funded by the Irish Research Council (2021-22), and is now funded by the Department of Justice, Policing Authority and An Garda Síochána (2024-26).
About the speaker
Dr Ian Marder
Dr Ian Marder is Assistant Professor in Criminology, Co-Deputy Director of the Centre for Criminology and Restorative Practices Officer at Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology, which he joined in May 2018. His research focuses on the development of restorative justice and restorative practices in criminal justice and higher education settings. His current research projects include those funded by the Department of Justice, An Garda Síochána and the Policing Authority (to facilitate dialogue between young Black adults and the police), and the National Open Research Forum (to embed a culture of interdisciplinary open research in criminal justice in Ireland).