Tánaiste and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell is to meet top US officers for talks on ways to curb organised crime and gun offences.
Mr McDowell, accompanied by Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy and secretary general of the Department of Justice Seán Aylward, will travel to Los Angeles tomorrow.
There he will meet the city's police chief, Bill Bratton, who previously led police forces in Boston and New York, where he introduced "zero tolerance" measures.
Mr Bratton's Comstat system, first developed in New York, tracks crime patterns and persistent offenders by location, thus forcing greater accountability from on-the-ground police.
Mr McDowell will also visit the headquarters of biotechnology company Amgen, which is building a $1 billion (€0.76 billion) manufacturing plant in Carrigtohill, Co Cork, which is to employ 1,100 people by 2010.
From there Mr McDowell will travel to Chicago to meet the local police chief, Supt Philip J Cline, before going to Notre Dame university in Indiana which has strong Irish ties.
There Mr McDowell and senior University College Dublin academics are to meet members of Notre Dame's law faculty and its Institute for Irish Studies for talks on ways to improve links between the two universities.
In New York the Tánaiste will take part in a seminar on criminal justice at the John Jay College, meet New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and attend an American-Ireland Fund dinner.