Nationalists and republicans this week welcomed the announcement that police officers will now have to disclose their membership of certain political or secret organisations.
A useful and necessary development said the SDLP. A welcome move according to Sinn Féin.
The designated groups include the Orange Order, Apprentice Boys, Royal Black Institution, Knights of Columbanus, Hibernians and the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of Ireland. But what exactly does the decision mean?
The information cannot be used in court. For example, a defending solicitor cannot argue, "My Catholic client is being prosecuted for speeding, your worship, simply because the observing police officer is a member of the Orange Order."
Membership details will be available to only the Chief Constable, the Police Ombudsman and, in some cases, the Police Board (but not District Partnership Boards). So the information will remain largely secret, an understandable protection of the privacy of police officers, but a decision which surely undermines the point of the process in the first place.
The overall aim is presumably to establish an impartial police service and thus a just society. But there are two flaws in this view. The first is that the police service is only one element in the judicial process. The decision to prosecute or drop serious cases is taken by the Director of Public Prosecutions. Cases are argued by solicitors and barristers and decisions are reached by magistrates and judges.
All of these people are currently exempt from declaring the type of affiliations now required of police officers, even though they – particularly judges – have more power and influence in the legal process than the police. Should they not be as transparent and accountable as police officers?
Or are the police perceived by our politicians as merely the tradesmen of the legal system, potentially dodgy in their political allegiances, while the others are professionals whose education, earning power and social standing place them above suspicion? Sectarianism is not the only division in our society.
The second flaw is that police officers can be members of lots of other groups. Is a police officer who tears up a speeding ticket for a fellow Orangeman somehow more despicable than one who does the same favour for a fellow member of his golf club – or even his brother-in-law or the fellow he sat beside in school?
And what about the two officers who stop writing tickets because they are fed up and just want to go home for their tea? Has the one who is a Hibernian committed a more serious misdemeanour than the one who is not?
So while the latest announcement is not entirely cosmetic, it is not nearly as significant as some political reaction might have suggested. What is significant, however, is what politicians did not comment on.
A few days previously Derry police claimed to "know" the identity of those responsible for the murder of a civilian worker at an army camp there last year. But they said they could not bring charges because they did not have enough evidence.
In most civilised societies, people are charged by the police and judged by the courts. When the police begin to judge they sink to the level of paramilitaries. If they "know", their knowledge can only be on the basis of firm evidence. If they do not have such evidence, then they do not "know". To claim otherwise jeopardises the chances of a fair trial for anyone subsequently charged with this crime.
If they "know" through an informer, the question must be asked: have they distanced themselves sufficiently from the murky world of the British intelligence system? Recent reports suggest that this system had a hierarchy of informers in which some of those at the bottom were sacrificed to protect those at the top. Is the PSNI linked into that system?
Obviously police work relies heavily on information from a variety of sources. But translating intelligence, however reliable, into a public claim of knowing the guilty party without corroborating evidence is hardly the hallmark of a just society.
It was a statement largely unchallenged by politicians. That may be because there is a tendency in our society to believe that justice is the same thing as creating embarrassment or difficulties for your political opponents in the Apprentice Boys or the Knights of Columbanus.
But in the campaign for a just society there is a significant difference between progress and point scoring. The sad reality is that failure to recognise that difference leaves justice further away than ever.
