A new safety strategy for Rialto, Inchicore and Bluebell seeks to upend old approaches to violence

Community workers for neighbourhoods along the Grand Canal in the west of the city launched a new strategy on Tuesday evening, centered on radical approaches to tackling serious violence.

While focused on communities of Rialto, Inchicore and Bluebell, the team behind it say it could be scaled out nationwide, where needed. 

The strategy, compiled by independent Senator Lynn Ruane, was developed over a year of collaboration with local residents, youth workers at home and abroad, service providers, and government agencies.

Unlike traditional models rooted in law enforcement and punishment, the approach put forward in the Community-Based Public Safety Strategy focuses on “relationship-based violence prevention, engaging community members as credible safety professionals and fostering community self-determination”, it says. 

It was commissioned by the Canal Communities Local Drug and Alcohol Taskforce (CCLDATF), one of the taskforces set up nearly 30 years ago in areas most affected by heroin.

Current strategies around policing and violence prevention haven’t worked, says Ger Doherty, coordinator with CCLDATF. This strategy responds to that, he said.

The general perception in these neighbourhoods around the Grand Canal, he says, is that violence has worsened over the last year or so.  

But rather than waiting for harm and reacting, the strategy seeks to intervene early, support people in crisis, and prevent violence before it escalates, Ruane says. 

The strategy also grows from the understanding that those involved in violence are often also victims of harm — and that real change requires addressing these underlying issues, she says. 

“People’s first experience of violence is rarely as the perpetrator,” says Ruane.

At the moment, the public-safety strategy is an aspirational document, says Doherty of the CCLDATF.

It will need significant funding over many years, he said. But “the big thing is that we now have a plan of action”.

Beyond traditional policing

The strategy is a shift away from short-term enforcement responses, which Ruane argues have often failed to address the deeper causes of violence.

“I think people are coming to the conclusion that the systems we have just don’t cut it,” Ruane says. “If prison stopped crime, there’d already be no crime.”

Instead of reactive, one-size-fits-all solutions, the new approach envisages flexible, coordinated responses that are tailored to the specific needs of people and places most affected by violence.

The goal is not only to reduce harm but to “redefine public safety through community-led solutions and targeted interventions focusing on healing, prevention, and empowerment to create safer, thriving communities”, the strategy document says.

Ruane says she was inspired by the Community-Based Public Safety (CBPS) model, first implemented in US cities such as Los Angeles and Newark.

There, locals are trained and employed as violence-intervention workers. These “credible messengers” have the lived-experience to relate to those now at risk of committing or becoming a victim of violence.

Intervention workers don’t just arrive after the violence, or to physically intervene in fights, Ruane says. 

They're part of the community, she says. “They're there even when things are okay too, they’re always visible.”

They are similar to other youth and community workers, she says, but with extra training, support, resources and credibility to get through to those hardest to reach in times when there is a fear of violence or retaliation.

The strategy also puts strong emphasis on Group Violence Intervention (GVI).

Co-developed by David Kennedy, executive director for the National Network for Safe Communities in the US – who Ruane consulted with for her research – this strategy was first introduced with  “Operation Ceasefire” in Boston in the 1990s.

The “group” has a big influence on whether somebody will act violently, because usually they're responding to what they see as the expectations in the group and group dynamics, Ruane says.

GVI looks at the group as a whole and makes it clear that the community is not going to accept violence in their area, she says.

“If there is violence, the community will respond to that and that's when the guards will come in and start with the stop-and-searches, and having that sort of presence on the street,” she says.

GVI offers high-risk individuals and their peers a clear moral message from the community that violence is not acceptable and aims to foster a sense of accountability within the groups, the strategy explains. 

The GVI approach also makes the legal consequences of violence and crime very clear, and that those who offend will be held accountable, Ruane says.

Ruane spent time in Newark with Aqeela Sherrills, co-founder and leader of the CBPS. The effectiveness of this approach was made clear to her, there on the ground, she says.

Ruane says the police would phone Sherrills or his team to say they had received calls about a group of youths, being boisterous maybe, using or dealing drugs.

The police would tell CBPS they had a certain amount of time to speak with the group, defuse the situation and warn them, before officers would arrive on the scene and things take a different turn.

“Oftentimes, the young guys don’t even realise they were intimidating people around them, just by being there. They didn’t actually mean to scare the old lady living in the corner house,” she says.

Ruane points to the Solas Project in the Liberties and the Connect 4 Project in Tallaght as examples to build on, and of how such workers, integrated within communities, can have a meaningful impact on violence and crime reduction.

Community engagement

Ruane says the strategy was shaped through engagement with residents and organisations in communities along this western stretch of the Grand Canal.

Conversations with people on the ground – from young people to service providers to community leaders – highlighted widespread frustration with current systems, she says.

Many spoke of a low visibility of services in the area, poor housing conditions, and fears of death and debt.

There is a synergy between the ideas set out in the CCLDATF’s safety strategy and the aims of the new local community safety partnerships (LCSPs), according to Gráinne Berrill, director of the National Office for Community Safety.

The LCSPs are being rolled out slowly now, nationally, to replace the joint policing committees (JPCs) that used to bring together local councillors and Gardaí to discuss community safety issues.

The idea is to try to make communities safer by bringing together the guards, social services, drugs services, locals residents, and public representatives to brainstorm and oversee ways to tackle anti-social behaviour and crime more holistically.

Speaking at the launch of the strategy in the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Kilmainham, Berrill said she admired the work undertaken by Ruane.

The LCSPs also hope to bring a whole-community approach to safety, she said.

LCSPs will encourage greater participation across society and state services to identify the issues within a community and respond appropriately, she said.

Berrill said she agreed with the sentiment behind the strategy, that those closest to the problem are also closest to the solution.

A new team

Central to the strategy is a proposal for a new dedicated, community-based team to work directly with individuals at risk of causing or experiencing serious harm.

The team would include outreach workers, health and trauma professionals, violence interrupters, and restorative justice facilitators.

Their role is not to monitor or penalise but to build relationships and support people in navigating services, addressing crises, and reconnecting with community life, the strategy says. 

This includes working with families, peer groups, and wider networks. The support offered is long-term and trauma-informed.

The team’s work would be coordinated by a project manager. They would act as a bridge between agencies and the community, helping to respond to local needs quickly and effectively.

The goal, Ruane says, is to have as many people in a community trained up with the tools of violence intervention as possible. This would include paid intervention workers, but also any trusted member of a community who may have a positive influence.

On restorative justice

Also key to the strategy is the expansion of restorative-justice practices throughout the community. 

Rather than relying solely on punishment, the strategy says it supports processes that enable people to acknowledge harm, take responsibility, and repair relationships.

These practices are already used in some schools and youth services in the area. The strategy aims to build on that, it says.

Ruane says that often problems in a young person’s life truly begin when they are expelled from school – cut-off from their peers and a healthy routine.

So, she says, some school staff could also be trained in violence intervention and restorative practice, in the hope of nipping issues in the bud earlier, within schools.

Restorative approaches are especially important in communities where trust in the justice system may be low, says Doherty, coordinator at the of the CCLDATF.

Supporting victims and survivors

The strategy also emphasises victim assistance, which Ruane says is often fragmented, under-resourced, or delivered in ways that fail to meet people’s emotional and practical needs.

The strategy proposes a new model: a coordinated, trauma-informed response that offers long-term support and places the needs of survivors at the centre.

This includes creating a dedicated victim-assistance fund, to help with challenges such as funeral costs, loss of income, counselling and home adaptations.

Recent years have seen some investment in victim support, says Ian Marder, associate professor in criminology at Maynooth University.

There was significant expansion of independent support services for victims of sexual and domestic violence, especially under the previous government, said Marder, by phone on Thursday. 

As was the roll-out of Garda Protective Service Units and victim liaison capabilities in justice agencies, he said.

But they were only significant relative to the very low starting point, he said.

Ireland still does not have a universal, general victim support service, that is independent of the criminal justice system. This means that many victims receive very little, if anything, in the way of support, Marder says.

Culturally, we still see victim and perpetrator interests as entirely unaligned, whereas providing proper victim support and restorative justice benefits everyone, he says.

“As long as we assume victims' needs can be satisfied from more and harsher criminal justice, we will miss the point entirely in terms of what helps people after they experience harm, and how we can prevent further harm in the future,” he says.

If people don’t get help to heal from what happened to them, Ruane says, they will go on to struggle in their lives, as will their children, and the cycle repeats.

Reconnecting communities

Beyond individuals, the strategy also seeks to repair the broader social fabric in the neighbourhoods it covers.

Years of disconnection, criminalisation, and generational trauma have left many people isolated from each other and from the services intended to help them, the strategy says. 

The cost-of-living crisis, the pandemic and the lingering impacts of austerity have exacerbated this, says Ruane.

The strategy calls for an increase in social activities on the streets, where people can meet, and for service providers to actively engage with the community and participate in such local events.

Some initiatives – such as recruiting and training violence-intervention workers in the community – are heavily dependent on funding, says Doherty. But others can be  done sooner, like promoting restorative practices.

“When there’s conflict, we need to get the people involved to deal with each other, in a non-violent way. It's about people who've been perpetrators of crime, coming face to face with their victims,” he says.

“That's something we can do in the meantime,” said Doherty.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.