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Public inquiries have become the standard political response to scandals and public crises, including allegations of institutional abuses.

At the time of writing, there are multiple ongoing inquiries (or calls for them) into forms of abuse throughout the UK and elsewhere. Northern Ireland, Scotland and Ireland have ongoing institutional abuse inquiries or commissions of investigation. Victims of the late Mohamed Al Fayed are calling for an inquiry into abuses suffered while they were employed at Harrods.

And the government has just announced a further national inquiry into grooming gangs in England and Wales. There has also been a concentration of institutional abuse inquiries globally over the last 30 years.

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Ireland in particular has had a lengthy history of such official investigations. Over the last two decades, it has had at least eight. In England and Wales, the issues of grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation have already been examined as part of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse led by child protection expert Alexis Jay. With 19 reports and evidence from over 6,000 victims within its Truth Project alone, it was the largest ever public inquiry in the UK.

Frequently demanded by victims and the public, inquiries have symbolic value in signifying official acknowledgement of wrongdoing and abuses. However, they arguably fail to deliver truth, justice, accountability and healing for victims in several ways.

The failures of abuse inquiries

Inquiries are inevitably constrained by their narrow terms of reference. This sets the parameters of the inquiry and shapes the scope and scale of their investigations and any eventual outcomes.

Terms of reference are frequently focused on how authorities responded to emerging allegations of abuses – whether churches, police or social services. A fuller examination of the systemic and structural issues that made abuses possible or allowed them to go unchecked for so long would be more useful.

The investigations are also usually focused on fact-finding at an institutional level. As a result, they often fail to deliver the comprehensive truth of specific cases or hold individual perpetrators to account, which is what many victims seek.

In older cases of abuse, things are even more difficult because so much time has passed and there may be no witnesses or records left to help prove what happened.

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Previous research shows that the inquiry process is often deeply traumatising for victims. Even if the emphasis is purportedly non-adversarial, the presence of lawyers and the dominance of legal culture and cross-examination effectively requires them to prove or justify their experiences. The basic effect becomes one of disbelief of victims or dismissal of their experiences of abuse.

Added to this are the significant costs of inquiries – in terms of money and time. The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse is said to have cost more than £180 million. As with many large investigations, it took seven years to produce its final report.

Inevitably, victims are left waiting years for outcomes and any sense of justice. Monetary redress (or compensation), if it comes at all, only usually happens once the inquiry has concluded.

Above all, public inquiries are severely limited in their capacity to produce meaningful, systemic and lasting change. Research shows that successive child abuse inquiries, decades apart, continue to make the same or similar recommendations. The lack of action by governments and institutions on recommendations means the issues remain unaddressed.

Over two and a half years later, many of the Jay report’s 20 recommendations remain unimplemented.

The collective failures of past abuse inquiries should prompt the government to pause and consider whether another is truly needed – or whether a different approach is required.

Rethinking public inquiries

With colleagues at the Transforming Justice Project, I’ve researched justice responses to historical institutional abuses over many years. Our work, based on extensive primary research with victims, as well as advocates and church and state representatives on the island of Ireland, has highlighted some of the failings of inquiries. We have also uncovered an appetite for doing things differently.

On one level, it is possible to reform inquiries by focusing more centrally on victims and the trauma they have experienced. This could include, for example, adopting themed approaches to inquiries, perhaps related to particular contexts or abuses, which report sooner as standard.

It might also mean specialist support services for victims running in parallel to inquiries. Or, it might mean involving victims in the design of the inquiry process from the outset.

It is also worth exploring alternative models of truth recovery, such as non-statutory independent panel in Northern Ireland. This panel focuses specifically on mother and baby institutions, Magdalene laundries, and workhouses. Here, the accumulated testimony of victims and their experiences will feed into the full statutory public inquiry on these forms of institutional abuse.

More broadly, rather than commissioning yet another inquiry, the government needs to follow up on existing recommendations from previous inquiries, including on child abuse. It is only by addressing the systemic issues underlying institutional abuse – including cultural attitudes and responses to victims – that we will prevent a recurrence of abuse in the longer term.

Anne Marie McAlinden received funding from the AHRC and, with colleagues on the Transforming Justice Project, from the British Academy and the Higher Education Authority.