• No official data is available on the total numbers of people incarcerated during the Troubles – nor is there any official data which details separate figures for loyalists and republicans. However, there is a bulk of other research which attempts to fill such gaps.
  • Various academic studies have taken place which make estimates of these numbers and/or similar statistics.
  • The research that FactCheckNI was able to locate broadly indicates that, from 1972 onwards, the number of republicans imprisoned was two or three times as high as the number of loyalists.
  • During internment, estimates indicate the number of republicans detained was almost 20 times higher than the number of loyalists.
  • However, there is also a lack of clarity about what the claimant, former DUP representative Ian Paisley Jr., meant by “proportionally”. FactCheckNI has made efforts to contact the ex-North Antrim MP but has received no reply.
  • Due to this lack of specificity with the claim, we currently rate this as UNSUBSTANTIATED. If you can point us to further evidence, this rating may change in future.

On an episode of BBC TV Show Nolan Live on 8 October, former DUP MP Ian Paisley Jr. said:

“More loyalists have gone to jail in Northern Ireland than any other section of the community… Proportionally, when you look at the number of arrests, more loyalists have gone to jail so the state has been very good at locking up loyalists.”

A recording of this part of the discussion was repeated the following day on an episode BBC Radio Ulster’s Nolan Show.

The comment took place during a conversation involving former Sinn Féin MP Michelle Gildernew as well as Mr Paisley and followed on from a BBC Borderlands podcast discussing violence during The Troubles.

All these discussions were in the context of the conflict and this fact check proceeds on the basis that the claimant was talking specifically about Troubles-related crimes rather than crime, more generally.

Our work also attempts to look at figures for both arrests and convictions leading to prison, noting that the former North Antrim MP said that “when you look at the number of arrests, more loyalists have gone to jail”.

There is no official data on the numbers of people imprisoned during The Troubles, nor on either the total numbers who were loyalist or republican. However, various academic studies have made efforts to assess either these precise figures, or adjacent statistics.

Our research found that estimates for total republican prisoners are broadly two or three times as high as for total loyalist prisoners for the period from 1972 onwards (therefore missing the first few years of what is generally considered to be The Troubles).

During internment specifically, the number of republicans detained is estimated to be almost twenty times as high as the number of loyalists locked up in the same fashion.

However, there is more to clarify this claim – specifically what the claimant meant by the word “proportionally”:

  • Does this mean more loyalists, relative to the total size in membership of different loyalist organisations compared with membership of republican groups?
  • Does it mean relative to the total numbers of murders committed by loyalists compared with the number committed by republicans (this might be a curious approach overall, given that many prisoners were not detained as a result of murder and also because murders were not the only serious crimes committed as part of the Troubles – but, on the other hand, murders were a specific aspect of the discussions between Mr Paisley and Ms Gildernew).
  • Does it mean something else? Or was it just a word used in the moment, during a live broadcast, and Mr Paisley ultimately meant that more loyalists than republicans went to prison?

Without speaking to Mr Paisley to clarify this, it is impossible to know precisely what he meant, and – considering the fact that all the relevant figures available are estimates of one form or another – it is impossible to say definitively if his statement is supported by evidence or not.

Based on that fact, our rating for this claim is unsubstantiated.

However, while we have been unable to be more definitive, there are still plenty of details below that could be of interest to anyone who cares about Northern Ireland and the recent history that continues to shape local society to this day.

As always, if anyone knows of any further sources of data relevant to this claim – that support or challenge our findings – please do not hesitate to get in touch.

  • Source

FactCheckNI has made several efforts to get in touch with Mr Paisley but, at the time of writing, had received no response. We will update this article if a reply is received and/or if new information comes to light.

  • Approach

While FactCheckNI could find no official data to answer this question comprehensively. However, that does not mean there is no relevant information. First, we need to precisely detail the approach taken in this fact check.

It is impossible to quantify the inner personal identities of all people jailed in Northern Ireland during the conflict. We will assume that “loyalist”, in this instance, refers to people with an affiliation to a loyalist paramilitary organisation (a reasonable overview of these are available via BBC News) or those claimed as loyalists by former prisoner groups.

Mr Paisley claimed that more loyalists went to prison compared with “any other section of the community”. It seems reasonable, in the context of the overall discussions in which this claim took place, to specifically compare loyalists with republicans.

  • Facts and figures

There are no published official statistics that disaggregate the political allegiances of people who were imprisoned during the Northern Ireland conflict. However, a range of expert academic reports over the years have made estimates, which are detailed below.

We could not find any published data on arrests of loyalists or republicans in Northern Ireland.

There were different phases of the conflict in Northern Ireland, and we can also take snapshots of these moments to try to assess the accuracy of the claim.

  • Internment 1971-75

Internment refers to the arrest and detention without trial of people suspected to be in paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. ‘Operation Demetrius‘ was introduced by the unionist Stormont government of Northern Ireland on 9 August 1971, and was continued by the British government until 5 December 1975. It was specifically designed to arrest suspected republicans.

Researcher Martin Melaugh, writing on internment for long-standing Troubles archive CAIN, said that from 1971-75 a total of 1,981 people were detained and that “1,874 were Catholic / Republican, while 107 were Protestant / Loyalist.”

Mr Melaugh does not elaborate on his exact method in compiling these figures, although a comprehensive list of both primary and secondary sources on internment is included.

Another estimate comes from Gerard Hogan and Clive Walker, in their book Political Violence and the Law in Ireland, is that 2,169 people were interned during this time – 2,060 suspected republicans and 109 suspected loyalists (p. 94).

These estimates differ slightly, although both indicate that during the internment period the number of detained republicans vastly outnumbered loyalists by around 20:1.

  • Conflict-related offences and imprisonment

The Troubles began in the late 1960s and spanned a roughly 30-year period,  generally focusing on the period 1968-98.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) data, archived on CAIN, records that the number of people charged with terrorist and serious public order offences between 31 July 1972 and the end of 1998 was 18,258. However, this data relates to charges, rather than convictions or imprisonment and its timeframe is from mid-1972 onwards. So while this is a useful figure, it does not give us complete prison numbers for the Northern Ireland conflict.

In 2016, The Detail reported that the Department of Justice had no official figures for the numbers of former paramilitary prisoners. Indeed, there is a large body of evidence pointing to the lack of published official statistics on the number of persons imprisoned for conflict-related offences – see, for instance, a report from OFMdFM (the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister, now The Executive Office), to expert academic evidence.

In the absence of official data, various academics and former prisoner organisations have estimated the number of people imprisoned for conflict-related offences. The vast majority of these people will have been imprisoned in Northern Ireland, however some estimates may also include those jailed in the Republic of Ireland and GB.

Sir George Quigley and Nigel Hamilton estimated in 2007 Employers’ Guidance, commissioned by OFMdFM, that there were up to 30,000 people with conflict-related convictions in Northern Ireland.

Research published in 2010 analysed Northern Ireland Office (NIO) data on the prison population, using the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland’s estimate that 75% of sentences were for politically motivated offences, to calculate that there may be up to 40,000 people with conflict-related convictions in Northern Ireland at the time of writing.

To work out how many prisoners were loyalist or republican, the only estimates FactCheckNI was able to locate are sourced from former prisoner groups:

  • In a 2001 book on paramilitary imprisonment, QUB legal academic Prof. Kieran McEvoy used data provided by former prisoner groups to estimate that around 15,000 republicans and between 5,000 and 10,000 loyalists were imprisoned for politically-related offences during the conflict.
  • Prof. Bill Rolston, in a 2011 report for OFMdFM, noted that Tom Roberts from the loyalist EPIC (Ex-Prisoners Interpretive Centre) made a higher estimate of “upwards of 12,000 loyalist prisoners.”
  • More recently, Dr Jack Hepworth (2022) cited an estimate from Republican ex-prisoners’ organisation Coiste na nIarchimí (now Coiste) that as many as 25,000 people were jailed for IRA activity during the Northern Ireland conflict.
  • Prof. Mary Corcoran, in her 2006 book Out of Order, wrote that 1,018 women were imprisoned during the conflict in Northern Ireland and that a significant majority were republican.

It is impossible to establish which of these estimates is closest to reality when there is no published official data. All that we can say is that if we use the lowest estimates for each grouping, republican prisoners outnumbered loyalist prisoners 3:1 during the Northern Ireland conflict; and if we use the highest estimates, republican prisoners outnumbered loyalist prisoners 2:1.

It’s worth noting that the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights reports that “only a handful of security force members were imprisoned” during the conflict.

  • Post-1998

We think, given the context of the Nolan Live discussion, that Ian Paisley’s claim that there were more loyalist prisoners than any other group related to the conflict period. However, for completeness we will also look at snapshots of information from the period since then.

The 1998 Agreement contained a provision for early prisoner releases for those affiliated with paramilitary groups, contingent on those organisations maintaining a ceasefire.

The Sentence Review Commissioners reported in 2025 that a total of 483 prisoners had been freed under these provisions, the vast majority of these between 1998 and 2000.

Academics Anna Bryson, Kieran McEvoy and Allely Albert wrote in 2021 that of the 482 prisoners that had been released under the scheme at that time, 249 were republicans, 194 were loyalists and 39 were non-affiliated.

There is very little publicly available data disaggregating prisoners by political grouping after 2000.

In 2016, The Detail reported on paramilitary prisoners at Maghaberry Prison, where many of Northern Ireland’s paramilitary linked prisoners are now held. Using data provided by the Northern Ireland Prison Service, it broke down the number of individuals held in separated housing wings between 2009-2015. In 6 out of 7 years for which data is available, more people were housed in republican wings than in loyalist wings. 

Figure 1 – source: Data provided by NI Prison Service to The Detail.

The only data point where we could find more loyalist prisoners than republican prisoners is a House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Report on The separation of paramilitary prisoners at HMP Maghaberry published on 11 February 2004. The 2004 Committee Report states that out of 718 prisoners, they believed that 75 had a Republican affiliation and up to 120 had a loyalist affiliation.

But this ratio was temporary. Bryson et al said in 2021 that there were approximately 30 dissident republicans and ten loyalists being held in Maghaberry Prison at that time.

PSNI data for 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025 records that 19 people were arrested under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and 5 people were charged. This figure is not broken down by paramilitary association. However, it is worth noting the very small numbers, indicating that the security situation is very different today than it was during the conflict.

  • Analysis

Researching prison numbers by paramilitary or political grouping during the conflict is very difficult due to lack of published official data. Researching the number of arrests by paramilitary or political grouping proved to not be currently possible.

Our analysis of available data for internment 1971-1975 indicates that almost twenty times more republicans than loyalists were imprisoned in that fashion.

In the wider conflict until 1998, we found various estimates from academics and former prisoner groups that suggest the number of imprisoned republicans was around two or three times as high as the number of imprisoned loyalists.

During the wider conflict period up until 1998, estimates of prisoners from academics and former prisoner groups also suggest that two or three times as many republicans were imprisoned as loyalists. 

Since 1998 the numbers of paramilitary prisoners has shrunk hugely due to the conflict being over (broadly speaking) as well as early releases of prisoners as part of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. The snapshots of data that are available generally indicate that there are slightly more republicans than loyalists in prison.

Due to the lack of official data, most of this data relies on estimates – however, these are generally estimates grounded in proper academic research. It’s worth pointing out that official data is not sacrosanct and high-quality, robust academic studies are not of lesser value.

The real issue, however, is that there remains some doubt about the precise meaning of this claim.

Ultimately FactcheckNI has outstanding questions about Ian Paisley’s assertion. Does he (or anyone else) have access to, or knowledge of, data on loyalist arrests? What did he mean by “proportionally” more loyalists being arrested? We will update this article should further detail on this come to light.