After overcoming unionist resistance, and significant pressure from the US Congress, the recommendations of the Independent (Patten) Commission on Policing, appointed under the terms of reference specified in the GFA, were broadly implemented. All told, this was a major accomplishment of the Agreement.
Unfortunately, in 2011, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Owen Patterson, halted the 50:50 quota, which had partially transformed recruitment into the new police service: Catholic overall recruitment had reached 30%. Patterson’s biased decision is an outstanding example of the need to see ‘rigorous impartiality’ in policy-making and administration. As a result by November of 2021 the BBC reported that the most recent cohort of recruits into the PSNI included just 24% of cultural Catholics. (1). Two years later in 2023 the Belfast Telegraph would report the PSNI had reached the lowest staffing levels in its history and that a deep budget deficit required the PSNI to freeze recruitment (2)
There is an urgent need to have a balanced police service going forward, especially when the Catholic population has just exceeded the Protestant population in numbers. Age-cohort data from the census show the disparities in the younger age-cohorts. Currently a minority of Protestants is policing a majority of Catholics in the under 35 cohorts, the age-range within which most criminal and potentially violent political activity takes place.
A restoration of the quota is therefore politically imperative. The new PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boucher announced in September of 2024 a new “recovery plan” that would raise the number of police to 7,000 over three years. The BBC reported that PSNI currently has the PSNI has a staff totally 6,300 and that 4,500 officers are “deployable,” (3) (4)
Indeed, a 50:50 quota would in fact be an over-recruitment of young Protestants within the relevant age-cohorts so it can hardly be deemed unreasonable. The restoration of the 50/50 quota would provide some reassurance to unionists that there will be a balanced police service in the near term future.
(1) [SOURCE: BBC.com: Catholic recruitment an issue as PSNI turns 20].
(2) Belfast Telegraph: PSNI to have lowest amount of officers in its history by March 2023
(3) BBC.com: PSNI plan to raise officer numbers to 7,000
(4) BBC.com: PSNI numbers at watershed moment – chief constable
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