Trailers and tribulations: crime, deviance and justice in the Gypsy and Traveller communities

Through a primarily ethnographic approach that also consisted of fifteen interviews with members of the Gypsy and Traveller community and eleven interviews with key-stake holders, this research explores how Gypsies and Travellers deliver justice within their community by developing a greater understanding of their moral codes and their relationship with, and recourse to, official agents of social control. The research shows that the Gypsy and Traveller community adhere to a strict moral code. This at times conflicts with the values held by the wider British society. This has meant that the Gypsy and Traveller community have had to adapt to their environment, becoming bricoleurs; drawing on some facets of the dominant British society while at the same time other aspects are rejected and replaced with their own cultural values. Crime is understood through the notion of harm, and techniques of neutralisation are applied to attitudes of crime and deviance. The research also highlights how informal community justice is operated through a system of restorative justice. Through the use of shame, those who transgress the moral boundaries become reintegrated into the community. However, the severity of some offences is so great the only course of action is the exclusion of the individual. Here shame becomes disintegrative. The community have very limited recourse to official agents of social control. This in part is due the lack of legitimacy seen by Gypsies and Travellers in the policing of their communit