There are no easy solutions — and little to be gained from ministerial promises of ‘getting tough’. Ignore any government statements that the commissioner has reassured them he has enough resources.

It is hard for the commissioner to say otherwise when budgets have increased, though this has to be factored against wider policing tasks, growing crime types and a rising population.

Community groups have flagged ad nauseum the crisis in certain communities: with people simply not feeling safe; the constant threat of violence and the corrosive impact of open drug dealing, public drug usage and drug debt intimidation.

A stream of research has documented again and again the same problems — not enough policing, cuts to community and youth projects, difficulties in accessing mental health services and the magnetic pull of cash, status and excitement from involvement in drug gangs.

There is also a wider question as to how to deal with juvenile violence — with much, but by no means all, assaults, robberies and intimidation on the streets coming from gangs of young teenagers. What is the balance to be struck between effective punishment and rehabilitation of children?

People living in communities and those working or visiting them need to feel safe and need to know that if they are assaulted or robbed it will be investigated by gardaí and that action is taken against perpetrators — even if they are juveniles.

At the same time, the State has a task, and has a legal obligation, to intervene in the lives of those children, including the most serious offenders, and offer them a way out in order for them to avoid as much as possible a criminal conviction and detention.

But what is crippling the State is a staffing and funding crisis in all the key areas — policing, youth work, social work, drug projects and mental health services.

Much of the problem stems from the recession and the blanket moratorium on recruitment and savage cutbacks in funding and services — a haemorrhage that drained the lifeblood out of disadvantaged communities the most.

Mixed in with that is a morale crisis, with associations and groups across policing, mental health, youth work, community projects and social work, flagging this for many years. The staffing situation has no doubt worsened in recent years with the economy picking up and State agencies finding it difficult to recruit people.

Covid hit recruitment hard, with 1,100 fewer garda recruits than otherwise would have happened.

As reported in the Irish Examiner last month, garda numbers are below the European average for police-to-population ratios, at 291 for every 100,000 people, compared to an average of 328. That was based on 2020 numbers, but with falling garda numbers that has dropped to 277.

So, we know there is a recruitment crisis in policing, and all the other key sectors. But there is also a retention crisis, with people resigning from jobs because they are too stressful, where working conditions have worsened and, yes, where they feel they are not paid enough.

This is where the Government and its agencies should start — and do their best to keep the gardaí, youth workers, social workers and psychiatric nurses we have. Respect and value them. Improve their working conditions. Make them know they are appreciated and take whatever possible action to keep them.

What individual gardaí and garda associations also complain about is the extent of desk work they now have to do, inputting into the Pulse computer system or filling out forms, or waiting on the line to get through to the Garda Information Services Centre in Castlebar.

“We are drowned in red tape”, one garda source said, “when we should be out on the street”.

They also complain, rightly or wrongly, over having to look over their shoulder at Gsoc investigations in case someone makes a complaint or they make a potential error in dealing with fraught, even violent, situations.

It may well be time for the Garda Commissioner to speak out more and make no bones about the crisis. Short of a sudden surge in students coming out of Templemore, he could do with a doubling, and more, of overtime from the Government.

Fianna Fail’s Jim O’Callaghan has mentioned increasing the compulsory age of retirement.

Policing has expanded and resources have had to be put into important areas such as protective services units (to investigate sexual and domestic crimes) and cybercrime, for example. All the time the resources continue to drain from the frontline. The focus now must now be on the regular units and community policing units.

A recent Oireachtas committee report on youth work highlighted the crisis that it too faces, in terms of funding, staffing and low morale. This much-undervalued work — which is a long-term effort — is key if we are to engage with those juveniles most at risk of violence, drug-dealing and disorder.

The report highlighted the benefit of projects engaged in outreach work with young people “disconnected from their communities, often because of drug use, trauma and marginalization”.

Not that any these factors excuses acts of violence by juveniles — which are often against other children, inflicting trauma and physical injuries on them. 

Positive developments

But, it would be churlish to ignore the positive things the State is doing.

The Department of Justice has funded special projects to target young people and criminal gangs, including the ‘Greentown team’ in University of Limerick. The Youth Justice Strategy 2021-2027 has allocated funding for youth projects with the most serious of young offenders.

There is a widely-welcomed pilot project combining both gardaí and health workers in Limerick — but it is still yet to start.

A Garda Dublin Crime Response Team, a regional task force, has been set up, apparently focusing on local drug-dealing up to now — but perhaps could expand to street gangs and violence? Proposed legislation will legally oblige health and other agencies to work with gardaí on community safety.

Dublin’s inner city has the Dublin North East Inner City Initiative — set up in the wake of the Kinahan killing campaign in the area. Drogheda has a similar task force, set up after the murder and dismemberment of 17-year-old Keane Mulready-Woods.

Local community safety partnerships, of which three are being piloted, are due to be rolled out next year. The Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs has already heard about these issues and will focus on them in more detail in September and hopefully make recommendations.

A long-planned pilot supervised injecting centre is due to start in Dublin in early 2024, after first being legislated for in 2017. This initiative, which agencies in Cork city also want, will reduce the numbers of people injecting drugs on the street and in laneways.

They are all good developments. There is no need for empty talk of ‘getting tough’ or ‘zero tolerance’. Instead, invest in agencies, improve their working conditions, and fund local groups. Allow and support people on the frontline to do their job.