A leading academic has estimated that the clearance rate for convictions in paramilitary style murders since the Good Friday Agreement is less than two per cent.
Paul Nolan, a researcher specialising in the peace process and a member of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, looked back at all terrorist related killings carried out since the peace process.
To date 158 people have died in what the PSNI refer to as security-related killings in the period since the Good Friday Agreement, the 20 year anniversary of which occurred earlier this month.
The largest single loss of life occurred on 15 August 1998 when 29 people were killed in the Omagh bomb.
Mr Nolan's research has shown that only 11 people have been imprisonment for murder and five for manslaughter in relation to killings that have taken place in the past 20 years.
Writing for The Detail website Mr Nolan said; "This is despite the fact that in almost every case the PSNI and the gardaí feel confident they know the identities of the perpetrators.
"Securing a conviction is a different matter. Witnesses are simply too afraid to give evidence in court, and so even in those rare cases where a prosecution succeeds the convictions tend to be of those on the periphery of the case, not the trigger men or the leaders of the murder gangs.
"Any estimate of the number of people involved in the security-related killings that have taken place since 1998 is bound to be speculative, but with a conservative estimate of seven or eight people involved in one way or another in the average case, and even allowing for the fact that some gang members were involved in more than one murder, it is likely that the total number may be close to 1,000.
"Or, to put it another way, the conviction rate for all these killings is below two per cent", he added.
