Sinn Féin delivering on justice - Maskey
Published: 6 March, 2010
The Hillsborough deal has secured a date for the Transfer of Powers on policing and justice - this is a truly welcome development. We are delivering on our mandate.
Our task is to develop a justice system we can have faith in, one which will emerge more responsive to our needs, through informed debate in the time ahead. We will need to debate all the complex issues from crime prevention to those preventative and diversionary measures, required to keep our young people from an anti-social or criminal lifestyle.
All our efforts must be about keeping communities safe, Ensuring our senior citizens feel safe in their homes.
The criminal justice system has to change and embrace that change. Just ask the Holland or Devlin families.
We have worked hard to make policing better and there Has Been considerable change but much more needs to be done.
Our members will continue to drive forward our agenda, delivering a police service we can support, as it breaks from the past and looks to the future. We believe we are making good and steady progress as the Policing Board and DPPs engage more with communities, including As Gaeilge. The PSNI also are engaging more - in Partnership - with local communities having a Greater say in how policing is delivered.
We have supported communities, like Short Strand, to ensure the closure of old style barracks which are tired relics of a repressive past. We will Continue this work to ensure that those facilities which Are needed, to provide a modern police service, will be demilitarised and fit for a new era.
Challenges remain, whether it is that Inbuilt resistance to change, abuse of powers like Stop and Search or the denial of the truth to countless families through delayed and denied inquests, but We are Well up for those challenges on behalf of those we are privileged to represent.
Comrades we are delivering on our mandate while striving for an all-Ireland justice system.
Our members are active day and daily - in the North on the Policing Board, DPPs and JPCs in the 26 counties - to Keep our communities safer - by working tirelessly to make the policing and justice systems across this island, representative, accountable and responsive to our needs as they engage in equal partnership with us.
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