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Thinking Allowed: 19/01/2011

19/01/2011

BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed, 19/01/2011

The impact of paramilitary punishment attacks on the young delinquents of Belfast.

Why do young delinquents in Belfast carry on despite terrible punishments dished out by paramilitaries? Also - why people donate more money to natural disasters than human ones.

Committing crime in West Belfast carries a double jeopardy. As well as the police, there are the paramilitaries to look out for. Between 1973 and 2007 there were two and a half thousand shootings and beatings attributed to republican paramilitaries as punishment attacks. Young people have been 'tarred and feathered', had their legs broken, hundreds have been 'knee-capped' and a few have been 'executed' - i.e. murdered - in response to what they are assumed to have done. For three years at the height of this practice Heather Hamill lived and worked in the Catholic Community of West Belfast to research the pseudo-judicial process administered by the IRA. As punishment attacks are growing again, this time at the hands of dissident republican groups, she discusses paramilitary punishment attacks with Laurie and the criminologist Dick Hobbs.
Also on the programme today, Hanna Zagefka discusses her report which shows why people give more money to natural disasters like the Asian Tsunami than human ones like the crisis of Darfur. 

Producer: Charlie Taylor.

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