The figures are startling. In the first week of 1999 alone, 14 people were beaten or shot in so-called punishment attacks in the North.
Seven were injured by loyalists and seven by republicans. The attacks were not the work of dissidents.
According to Families Against Intimidation and Terror, they were carried out by the Provisional IRA, the UDA and the UVF - organisations all supposed to be on ceasefire and whose political representatives have signed up to the Mitchell principles of democracy and non-violence.
Ironically, punishment attacks have risen with the peace process. In 1995, the first full year after the ceasefires, the number of beatings and shootings by the IRA rose four-fold - from 32 in 1994 to 141. The number by loyalists doubled from 38 to 76.
Last year, 237 people were targeted by the paramilitaries. The FAIT spokesman, Mr Vincent McKenna, attributes the increase to the desire of paramilitaries to keep control of their own communities.
"With the ceasefires, they had to abandon their previous targets. The Provos aren't killing police officers and soldiers any more and the mainstream loyalists aren't shooting Catholics. The only way for them to retain their authority in their own areas is to increasingly use their weapons against their own people.
"It also keeps hardliners within the organisations occupied and stops them asking where the peace process is going. If they're busy carrying out these attacks, they have less time to wonder what their leaders are up to."
Mr McKenna says the attacks are also becoming more savage. "The IRA isn't using hurley bats for beatings now. It's using iron bars and hammers. The attackers want to hear bones crunch.
"In shootings, it's no longer a case of aiming a low-calibre weapon at a kneecap. The victim could expect to recover relatively quickly from that type of attack.
"The IRA is now using heavy-calibre weapons and aiming at shin bones and the side of knees. They're shooting the joint right out. No amount of surgery is going to put it back together.
"The loyalists are now using shotguns which basically blow legs to bits. They might as well just take a knife and cut the legs off."
In republican areas, victims tend to have been involved in petty crime such as taking cars or burglary, although an increasing number of attacks seem to be motivated by personal grudges. In loyalist areas, Mr McKenna says, many attacks are drug-related.
"Often a minor drug dealer will be targeted for running up debts with the paramilitaries, or else operating on someone else's patch."
FAIT believes the North's politicians and the British government are not adequately addressing `punishment' attacks. "If the big war is over, they're not too worried about the small war continuing," says Mr McKenna.
"The British government seems quite happy so long as the IRA isn't bombing Canary Wharf. More people being shot or beaten in the ghettos is a price it's prepared to pay."
He points out that victims tend to have a certain social and economic profile. "They aren't well educated. They are either unemployed or work in low-paid jobs."