THE Garda Siochana will need a new ethos if it is to maintain its core values into the next millennium, the Garda Commissioner has said.
Mr Patrick Culligan told the international crime conference in Dublin yesterday that the force's strategies for the future include "employee empowerment", and a focus on "initiative driven operations involving co operation with other agencies.
Above all, he said, gardai on the beat would be "empowered to develop a sense of their own area of responsibility, so that the people they serve will recognise their integrity, their commitment and their effectiveness".
Mr Culligan was speaking at the opening session of the week long conference entitled "International Perspectives on Crime, Justice and Public Order".
More than 200 senior police officers, academics, lawyers and justice officials from 27 countries are attending.
The conference, at Dublin Castle, is organised by the Department of Justice, the Garda and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Mr Culligan said increased public awareness and discussion of the Garda and other agencies is needed "if we are to avoid a descending spiral of crisis management in the short to medium term".
"I do not share the widely promoted view that we live in an age of urban crisis and moral panic, but the Garda must acknowledge that public perception and expectations of the force are influenced by this outlook," he said.
Among the challenges facing the force were increased urbanisation and improved educational levels which brought a greater demand for public accountability of the Garda and a stronger emphasis by citizens on their personal rights. Crime was also changing, with more sophisticated criminals emerging, as well as "persistent public disorder, vandalism, thuggery, petty crime, gratuitous violence and substance abuse."
Mr Culligan said the Garda would benefit from well educated recruits and improved technology, allowing more gardai to be placed "on the beat".
The Garda would move from the traditional model of "control" to one based around the force's core values, he said. These included service and courtesy to the public, "a teamwork approach which values participative management", cost consciousness and "pride in doing a good job".
Welcoming delegates to the conference the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, said international co operation would make all involved better able to tackle global crime.
She said most delegates would have similar experiences of crime, for example crime by young people in areas with high unemployment, a lack of basic community facilities and a large young population.
The Department and the Garda had pioneered several innovations in community policing and multi agency programmes in this area, she said, including the successful juvenile liaison schemes.