Near or far away: Local police governance in Ireland

Abstract

This paper will outline the extent to which local police governance is provided for in Ireland. It will argue that, in a country that has of late been plagued by policing scandals, reform agenda as yet have not been preoccupied by this issue and so formal police governance has not emerged. On the other hand, however, the paper analyses reform trends that tend towards such developments. These are analysed and it is argued, firstly, that these developments have been substantially shaped by the post-colonial nature of the state and, secondly, that through these examples we can question the virtues and vices of local police governance.

From housing crisis to housing justice: Towards a radical right to a home

“…(Participant 31) While the policing of social protest has been somewhat tolerant of conventional forms of political protest, Della Porta and Fillieule (2004) have specified the types of repression mentioned above as 'ritualistic stand-offs', based on a more aggressive police presence but often at a distance. Irish policing is permeated by a history of political violence in the conflict in Northern Ireland, and despite the relatively high levels of trust in the force, the Gardaı´have shown potential for aggressive repression (Conway, 2019). The accounts presented here suggest that activists can effectively navigate multidimensional repressive contexts but that state repression potentially impacts the strategies they employ (Chenoweth et al, 2017).…”

“Strikingly and Stubbornly High”: Investigating the Paradox of Public Confidence in the Irish Police

“…Hough (2007, p. 71) has argued that in many instances “fairly good” (arguably similar to “quite satisfied” in this context) is equivalent to “don’t know” or “undecided,” so that these higher levels of satisfaction may be more likely to better reflect a “firm” level of support that is relatively invariant over time (Bradford, 2011, p. 186). This observation is particularly pertinent to the “mid trust” category in the post-2015 GPAS that includes respondents with a rating as low as 5/10, affording “a rather generous interpretation of ‘mid’” (Conway, 2019, p. 529).…”

“…This is even more perplexing given the wave of scandals to have hit the force in recent decades, ranging from police corruption in Donegal in the late 1990s (Conway, 2010), to more recent whistleblower scandals resulting in the resignation of a slew of government Ministers and high-ranking officials. We may wonder, with Conway (2019, p. 529), why “[i]t has long been a notable factor that public confidence in policing is high in Ireland,” and, further, “[why] the scandals of recent years have done little to affect that.” Understanding why the Irish police (or Garda/Gardaí) has putatively held the confidence of its citizens better than other countries, and in the face of documented corruption and scandal, provides an opportunity for new insights. Do the very high levels of confidence in the police recorded in domestic surveys accurately reflect levels of public confidence?…”

Doing Criminology and Criminal Justice in Ireland: Perspectives From a Peripheral Nation

“…This was the topic of her first book, The Blue Wall of Silence: The Morris Tribunal and Police Accountability in Ireland (Conway, 2010). She also published several peer-reviewed papers on this topic, including “Current developments in police governance and accountability in Ireland” (with Dermot Walsh in Crime, Law and Social Change , 2011), “Near or far away: Local police governance in Ireland” (in the European Journal of Criminology , Conway, 2019), and “Policing in a United Ireland: the intractable questions of governance, oversight and accountability” ( in Irish Studies in International Affairs , Conway, 2022). Her articles analyzed the decades of police scandals in Ireland and the State’s response to those scandals, including the Garda Síochána Act 2005, which provides the legislative underpinning of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission and the Garda Inspectorate.…”