‘Alright in their own place’: Policing and the spatial regulation of Irish Travellers

Introduction

Despite the common characterization of late-modern society in terms of mobility, fluidity and ‘liquidity’ (Bauman, 2000), this is applied in highly contrasting ways. On the one hand, it involves an appreciation and facilitation of the globalized economy and the mobility of capital and corporate executives, and the vast tourism industry. On the other, it involves deep concern over the ‘problem’ of mobility as represented and practised by illegal immigrants, global criminal networks and other ‘disreputable’ individuals and groups (Weber and Bowling, 2008).

Irish Travellers are in many ways held to epitomize the ‘problem’ of mobility, such is the affront they give to the territorial governance requirements of the police and other regulatory agencies. Yet despite their characterization as innately disreputable and criminogenic (Drummond, 2006), their experiences within the Irish criminal justice system have received relatively little attention. The available research highlights the negative and oppressive quality of most Travellers’ involvement with the criminal justice system (Bhreatnach, 2007; Fanning, 2009; Hourigan, 2011; Walsh, 2000). It is largely based, though, on charting cultural representations of Travellers, or focusing on high-profile or historical events. Detailed empirical accounts of the relationship between Travellers and the police and other criminal justice agencies are available, but – ironically – these relate to the experiences of Travellers in Britain rather than in Ireland (Coxhead, 2007; Pizani-Williams, 1998; Power, 2004, 2007; Richardson, 2007). Given the scale of the difficulties cumulatively highlighted in this research, it is clear that further sustained analysis of these issues is required.

Drawing on interviews with Travellers and members of An Garda Síochána (Ireland’s national police force), ¹ this article examines the relationship between Travellers and the police in Ireland. First, I discuss the broad significance of spatial regulation within policing, particularly in terms of the emergence of the ‘policing diversity agenda’. I then consider the spatial exclusion of Travellers within Irish society, and their involvement with the criminal justice system historically. In the main body of the article I argue that a logic of spatial regulation has shaped – in negative and far-reaching ways – the police response to Travellers.

Policing, Diversity and Space

The weight of criminological research consistently demonstrates that ethnicity is an important factor in shaping people’s views on and experiences of the criminal justice system, and policing in particular (Bowling and Phillips, 2008; Rowe, 2004). Ethnic minority communities tend to be ‘over-policed’, through high levels of harassment, confrontational policing styles and overt misconduct of various forms (Chan, 1997; Keith, 1993). They also tend to be ‘under-protected’ insofar as their victimization is accorded a lesser significance by the police and other agencies (Bowling, 1999). The predictable outcome is that relations between the police and ethnic minority communities are often characterized by lack of confidence, suspicion and hostility.

Policy responses to address this situation – the specific contours of which, admittedly, vary greatly from society to society – have generally taken the form of what may be termed the ‘policing diversity agenda’ (An Garda Síochána, 2001, 2009; Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, 2001). The measures that comprise this policy platform share a common focus on improving relations between the police and ethnic minority communities, and include efforts to increase recruitment, improve consultation mechanisms, and ensure that the victimization of ethnic minorities elicits an appropriately professional response (Rowe, 2004, 2007). Their focus largely has been on the culture and/or practice of policing, rather than on the wider social field within which the police operate (Chan, 1997). However, there is a danger that this agenda assumes a level of homogeneity that does not exist across ethnic minority communities, still less within them (Rowe, 2004). It is clear, for instance, that ‘respectability’ is an important criterion for police officers when judging whether and how to deploy their powers (Kennelly, 2011; Weitzer and Tuch, 2005). As a consequence ‘disreputable’ white communities can enjoy relations with the police which are as bad or worse than relations between the police and ethnic minority communities (Webster, 2008: 293–295). The diversity agenda also largely relies on a geographical understanding of community (Rowe, 2004: 149–150) and so its adequacy is further problematic when it relates to groups for whom mobility is paramount (James, 2006, 2007).

Whether through the maintenance of order within state boundaries, or the explicitly local patrolling of particular neighbourhoods, policing is fundamentally about the regulation of behaviour within a specific spatial context (Herbert, 1997). As such, police suspicion is more likely to be aroused, and resources mobilized accordingly, when (typically marginal) people are judged to be ‘out of place’. The spatial component of policing is itself related to the information work that is at its core (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997). Police officers assess ambiguous situations according to the logics of the organizational context and wider institutional and social field in which they work, and as these are mediated through the prism of police occupational cultures and the daily practice of policing (Bittner, 1970: 46). The situations to which the police respond invariably involve some degree of interpretive action on their part, and this has a fundamental spatial component. State authority and the police power that animates it depends on ‘the capacity of the police to mark and enact meaningful boundaries, to restrict people’s capacity to act by regulating their movements in space’ (Herbert, 1997: 13).

While relations between nomads and ‘the outside world’ have always been complex and ‘ambiguous’ (Khazanov, 1994: 1), nomads typically were considered archaic remnants of the pre-modern age, culturally maladjusted to the norms of sedentary society and antagonistic to the territorial governance requirements of the nation state. As states sought to exert greater control over their territories through the enclosure of land and the expansion of the criminal justice system, nomads were deemed out of step with the mores and practices that would define modern society: sedentarism and predictability, wage-labour and private property, restraint and self-control, respectability and law-abidingness (McVeigh, 1997). Nomads were relegated to the margins, enabling society to be purified and morally cleansed by physically quarantining the source of pollution (Sibley, 1995).

As a consequence, nomads’ engagement with the criminal justice system historically largely involved efforts to control their mobility, and ensure they remained in locations which would not cause concern for settled people (Mayall, 1988). Despite the expansion of legal protections and promotion of the doctrine of ‘policing by consent’, this relationship has remained largely unchanged to the present day. Although policies of inclusion and rehabilitation may be evident in particular contexts (Van Bochove and Burgers, 2010), most evidence suggests that nomadic groups disproportionately were subjected to a variety of enforcement strategies to discipline their disorderly lives and punish their encroachment onto the territory of respectable society. While research suggests that a range of criminal justice agencies operate in a discriminatory fashion towards Travellers (Mac Gabhann, 2011; Pizani-Williams, 1998), the depth of their marginal status was most apparent in their relations with the police.

While some authors have considered police efforts to develop better means of consultation with Travellers (Morris, 2001; Taggart, 2003) and to address police hostility towards them (The Job, 2005), research suggests that police misconduct towards Travellers – involving derogatory language, harassment, provocation and other forms of questionable and/or illegal behaviour – is both commonplace and expected (Cemlyn et al., 2009; Pizani-Williams, 1998; Power, 2004, 2007; Richardson, 2007). Coxhead (2007) suggests that misconduct is so routine and widespread that the treatment of Travellers constitutes ‘the last bastion of racism’ within the criminal justice system. While research highlights extraordinary levels of disdain towards Travellers, much of the police preoccupation with them arises from their mobility and ongoing efforts to control it, typically involving formal law-enforcement strategies as well as informal and extralegal measures (Power, 2004). In the case of ‘new Travellers’ – those who adopt a travelling lifestyle but who are not necessarily Gypsies or Irish Travellers by origin – a similar stance is evident, one which relies heavily on surveillance and spatial regulation (James, 2006, 2007).

Irish Travellers and Spatial Exclusion

Travellers comprise an indigenous minority group within Irish society and are characterized by a tradition of nomadism – although for a majority of Travellers their nomadism is occasional, and for some, it is largely aspirational – and distinctive cultural practices (see generally, Bhreatnach, 2006; Gmelch, 1985; Helleiner, 2000). According to the 2006 census, they number 22,369 people or 0.53 per cent of the Irish Republic’s population, although the All Ireland Traveller Health Study Team (2010: 43) estimate a higher figure of 36,224 Travellers in the Republic. Under the Equal Status Act 2002, discrimination on the basis of membership of the Traveller community is prohibited, but Travellers are not formally recognized as a distinct ethnic group by the Irish state, even though they are designated as such in Britain and in Northern Ireland (McVeigh, 2007). The UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has ‘expressed concern at the State’s “persistent refusal” to recognise Travellers as an ethnic minority despite its earlier recommendations, and pointed out that they satisfied the internationally recognised criteria for such a group’ (Irish Times, 2011).

Despite their status as an indigenous community, Travellers remained firmly ‘out of place’ in the nationalist political project that emerged following Irish independence in 1922 (Fanning, 2002; Mac Laughlin, 1999). These nationalist sensibilities extolled the virtues of stable, homogenous, rural communities, and particularly ‘the fantasy of settling as many people on the land’ as possible (Garvin, 2005: 62). A cultural preoccupation with ‘place’ and ‘land’ – particularly against the historical context of colonialism and the sheer scale of agrarianism in Ireland – was and continues to be a hugely prominent theme of public life, and is reflected in levels of home ownership in Ireland that are among the highest in the European Union. This emphasis on land ownership went hand in hand with a rigid social and moral conservativism that emphasized piety, restraint and order (Ferriter, 2009; Inglis, 1998). The nomadism of Travellers was sharply at odds with such a determined appreciation of settlement. The exuberant gathering of Travellers at fairs and other social gatherings – important occasions for family reunions, match making and commerce alike – further associated them with carnivalesque disorder and excess.

During the 1960s, successive governments pursued strategies of assimilation, and the Minister for Justice starkly claimed that: ‘there can be no final solution to the problems created by itinerants until they are absorbed into the general community’ (Commission on Itinerancy, 1963: 111). By the 1980s and 1990s, the State formally committed itself to providing ‘halting sites’ for Travellers who did not wish to settle permanently in one location. However, responsibility for this was devolved to local authorities who proved reluctant to provide properly serviced sites in the face of vehement opposition from local councillors and residents’ groups (Norris and Winston, 2005). As a result, only a small fraction of the government targets for the provision of Traveller accommodation has been provided. A 2008 government review of Traveller accommodation found that 524 Traveller families were still living by the side of the road without access to running water, toilet facilities, refuse collection or other basic services; 324 families were in shared emergency accommodation; and a further 1,035 families were in halting sites (National Traveller Accommodation Consultative Committee, 2008). In terms of health, mortality, child mortality, life expectancy, unemployment, education and literacy, Travellers rank significantly worse than settled people, and by most indices of deprivation they are a ‘uniquely disadvantaged group’ (Rottman et al., 1986: 73). Life expectancy for Traveller men and women is, respectively, 15 and 11.5 years less than for the general population (All Ireland Traveller Health Study Team, 2010).

While this material disadvantage has been one key and ever-present feature of Traveller life, the deeply antagonistic relations between Travellers and the settled community is a further dimension of this (Fanning, 2002; Helleiner, 2000). The 1963 Commission on Itinerancy noted that among settled people Travellers evoked feelings of ‘bitter hostility often accompanied by fear’, and it observed that ‘in nearly all areas, itinerants are despised as inferior beings and are regarded as the dregs of society’ (1963: 102). In a 1972–1973 survey, Mac Gréil (1996: 71) found that in terms of social distance Travellers were ranked 52nd out of 59 response categories given. Later surveys revealed that, despite some changes in the level of social distance, Travellers’ relative ranking remained towards the very bottom of the scale. Out of 46 response categories provided in the 1988–1989 and 2007–2008 surveys, Travellers were ranked 43rd in the former, and 44th in the latter (Mac Gréil, 2011: 65–66). Furthermore, in the 2007–2008 survey, 18.2 per cent of respondents ‘would deny Travellers citizenship’, an increase from 8.2 per cent of respondents in the 1988–1989 survey (Mac Gréil, 2011: 313–314).

One dimension to the process of marginalization is the enduring manner in which Travellers have been constructed and characterized in relation to crime, and the following section considers Travellers and their involvement with the criminal justice system in Ireland.

Travellers and the Criminal Justice System

Within the Irish context, only in recent years has the issue of policing and ethnicity begun to receive any attention at all. The scale of ethnic homogeneity in Ireland was such that the Irish census did not even include a general question on race/ethnicity until 2006 (it included a question on membership of the Traveller community in the 2002 census). From 1996 onwards, as the economy expanded dramatically, Ireland changed from being a society of net-emigration to one of net-immigration. The proportion of non-Irish nationals within the population increased from 6 per cent in 2002 to 10 per cent by 2006. By the mid-2000s, Ireland ‘had a higher rate of immigration than any other European country save Luxembourg’ (Loyal, 2011: 3), and by 2008 ‘1 in every 6 workers in Ireland was a migrant’ (Loyal, 2011: 1).

High levels of public support historically had shielded the police from sustained calls for reform (Mulcahy, 2008). However in light of these demographic changes, Ireland adopted its version of the policing diversity agenda (An Garda Síochána, 2001, 2009). In 2001, An Garda Síochána established the Garda Racial and Intercultural Unit and subsequently ethnic liaison officers were appointed nationwide. Within this unfolding diversity agenda, however, Travellers have played only a supporting role. In 2005, for instance, a major recruitment drive also took place, which involved much-publicized efforts to maximize the number of applications from ethnic minority communities. The requirement that applicants had to be proficient in the Irish language was dropped, height restrictions were lowered and a ‘residency’ category was introduced as an alternative to nationality. These latter measures, however, had no bearing whatsoever on the recruitment of Travellers, for whom language, height and residency criteria had never prevented them from joining the force as of right. The recruitment campaign yielded 588 applications from people of Chinese background, but only seven applications from Travellers (even though the 2006 census records 16,533 people of Chinese background, compared to 22,369 Travellers).

Systematic information about Travellers and their attitudes towards and involvement with the criminal justice system is minimal, but analysis of the available evidence nevertheless demonstrates that Travellers have persistently been linked in public discourse with crime (Drummond, 2006). Historically Travellers were associated with relatively petty crime, largely opportunistic in nature. In 1945, the Minister for Justice claimed that: ‘Tinkers are a nuisance … They give trouble in some areas but I do not think they are a very big problem yet. The police have instructions to pay special attention to them’ (quoted in Kilcommins et al., 2004: 67). The 1963 Commission on Itinerancy reported that settled people associated Travellers with ‘constant begging, petty pilfering, trespass and damage in rural areas, drunkenness, noisiness and brawling when they get together’ (1963: 102).

Travellers were disproportionately subject to punitive sanctions. Ferriter (2005: 595) noted that ‘in 1965 two farmer’s sons were sentenced to two years in prison after being convicted of the manslaughter of a traveller, while in the same year a traveller was sentenced to seven years for assaulting someone in a street brawl’. The 1963 Commission on Itinerancy (1963: 157) noted that 357 Travellers were given prison sentences in 1962: this represented 22.7 per cent of all committals in that year (Kilcommins et al., 2004: 54). One study estimated that Travellers comprised between 4.6 and 8.7 per cent of all prisoners in custody in October/November 2008, overrepresentation by a factor of between nine and 16 (All Ireland Traveller Health Study Team, 2010: 153).

Such overrepresentation went hand in hand with ongoing claims that Travellers were deeply involved in crime, and throughout the 1990s in particular, there was a gradual shift in the characterization of Travellers from ‘petty’ to ‘predatory’ criminals (Dillon, 2006). Garda respondents in a human rights audit claimed that in one region ‘about 80 % of crime had some form of Traveller involvement’ (without outlining the basis on this claim) (Ionann Management Consultants, 2004: 82). In one prominent incident, newspaper columnist Mary Ellen Synon referred to claims that police believed ‘more than 90 [per cent] of the attacks on elderly people in rural areas are being carried out by travellers based mainly in three centres’. She continued by describing Traveller culture:

It is a life of appetite ungoverned by intellect. It is a life which marauds over private property and disregards public laws. It is a life of money without production, land without cost, damage without compensation, assault without arrest, theft without prosecution, and murder without remorse. It is a life worse than the life of beasts, for beasts at least are guided by wholesome instinct. (Sunday Independent, 1996)

The public hysteria surrounding Travellers increasingly has found expression in concerns about ‘feud-fighting’ (Dillon, 2006; Hourigan, 2011). Feuds among Travellers may arise and persist, partly at least, due to the sheer weight of tradition, and from the pressure to secure some form of resolution to ongoing disputes in the absence of widespread trust in the police (Okley, 2005). However, the extreme levels of violence evident in some feuds, the range of weapons used and the large numbers involved in various group confrontations, cumulatively have reinforced the view that Travellers are innately criminal and violent. ² In one 2007 survey in Ireland, 54 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement that ‘Travellers are more involved in crime than the settled community’ (36 per cent disagreed; Irish Political Studies, 2007: 218). Despite the absence of empirical research on Travellers’ relative rate of involvement in crime, their reputation for criminality has nevertheless become an international phenomenon (see Drummond, 2006; Kabachnik, 2009). For instance, the police in several US cities have issued warnings over the imminent arrival of Traveller ‘scam artists’ in the locality, ³ and other allegations relate to involvement in cross-border and international crime (Dillon, 2006).

This historical legacy of hostility and antagonism is the backdrop against which relations between Travellers and the police must be understood. As one garda report stated: ‘From a policing perspective much of the interaction between the Traveller community and the Police is in a negative context and this makes it difficult to develop any degree of trust between both groups’ (An Garda Síochána, 2001: 8).

Methodology

The research presented in this article is derived from two related projects: one on the relationship between policing and social marginalization (see Mulcahy and O’Mahony, 2005), and one on the changing field of policing in Ireland. The data are based largely on extended interviews and focus groups with Travellers and police officers conducted in 2002–2003, with some follow-up interviews being conducted in late 2003 and early 2004. Access to Traveller interviewees was negotiated through Traveller advocacy groups. The use of this qualitative methodology is particularly useful when seeking to obtain the views of members of marginalized communities, as these groups typically are underrepresented in conventional surveys even though their attitudes and experiences may vary considerably from other more established communities (Jones and Newburn, 2001). This is especially significant in relation to issues of crime and policing, where the racist victimization of one individual may be viewed locally as the intimidation of an entire community (Bowling, 1999). However, drawing on the assistance of such organizations to help contact individuals and groups does run the potential risk of appearing to be affiliated with that organization’s position. During the interviews, therefore, particular care was taken to stress that the research was entirely independent of that organization.

Overall, five individual interviews were conducted with Travellers (lasting between one and two hours in length), and five focus groups that included approximately 40 individuals (each lasting about one hour in length). This was supplemented by a number of informal interviews at the time as well as in subsequent years.

While some Travellers were very eager to participate in the research, others were much more reticent. One of the focus groups was, at times, a painfully silent affair in which efforts to open up discussion on policing issues met with only limited success. Further evidence of mistrust was evident on another occasion when, during an individual interview, the interviewer was asked if he was ‘a guard’. Even after assurances were given that the interviewer was not in the police, that the research was not being conducted by or for the force and that confidentiality would be maintained, the interviewee concluded the interview by again asking whether the researcher was ‘a guard’.

The views of police officers were obtained through interviews with serving and retired gardaí, with access facilitated by the Garda Press Office and the Garda Síochána Retired Members Association, respectively. In all, over 40 serving and retired gardaí were interviewed, ranging in rank from garda to senior officer level. Most of these interviews were recorded (again, with a guarantee of confidentiality), and typically lasted over an hour (with some lasting well over two hours).

Researchers have previously highlighted the manner in which the norms of police occupational culture – suspicion, occupational solidarity and conservatism – impact on the research process itself (Reiner and Newburn, 2008). In conducting the police interviews, I sought to remain attentive to this issue by building up a rapport with the interviewees as much as possible. While in most cases few difficulties arose, the tone in several police interviews did change markedly when I asked about relations with Travellers: one officer visibly tensed up when I raised the issue, while another officer who was non-committal on this matter during the interview became very animated about Travellers once the formal interview was concluded and the tape-recorder switched off. As he put it, ‘a lot of guards really dislike Travellers, like, really dislike them’ (straining with emphasis as he stated this). He then claimed that most guards ‘can’t stand’ Travellers, that they are more hostile towards them more than any other group in society, and that even the thought of having to deal with Travellers gave most guards a stress-induced facial tic (mimicking this as he was describing it to me).

Travellers as a ‘Problem’ Population

Police attitudes towards Travellers are neither monolithic nor uniformly negative. Gardaí typically distinguish – often drawing on their own positive/negative experiences – between Travellers they view as ‘decent people’ and those who are criminally active or otherwise ‘disreputable’. As one officer stated:

I’ve dealt with Travellers both at the end of a baton and sitting down having a cup of tea with them. You get very, very bad Travellers and you get very, very good Travellers … and the vast majority are grand, no problems with them at all.

Other officers also noted the need to distinguish between ‘decent’ Travellers and others, again highlighting their positive relationships with some Travellers.

one has to be very clear about this – they’re not all as bad as one another. There’s a certain element that are real criminals to the point of dangerous … and I have known some very nice ones, very decent people, like _____, we’d speak and that kind of thing. She’s a very nice woman. She has four very nice girls. In fact, I’m working with one of them now at the moment … a lovely girl …

Similarly, several Traveller interviewees mentioned instances of what they viewed as ‘positive policing’, including the actions of specific officers, as well as the activities of some units such as the Garda Racial and Intercultural Unit (since renamed the Garda Racial, Intercultural and Diversity Office). One Travellers’ rights organization noted ‘very commendable examples of good practice’ (Pavee Point, 2000: 3) where gardaí had sought to prevent the media sensationalizing criminal incidents involving Travellers. However, the manner in which these individuals and units were singled out for praise frequently highlighted the broader failings associated with the police organization as a whole. For example, one interviewee suggested that without an introduction from a ‘sympathetic’ guard, he would have been treated ‘completely the opposite’:

he actually talked to me, I found, like a human being, not as a Traveller. He just talked to me, like he was talking to a person in the settled community, he treated me just as good as anybody else.

Another Traveller interviewee highlighted the distinction between individuals and the organization: ‘there are sympathetic individual guards but there is no sense of a good service’. However, the difficulties of availing of a service that is accessed through approachable and helpful individual guards are clear, particularly ‘where people would feel that they know nobody’.

Among the Traveller interviewees, there was a shared view that hostility towards Travellers was widespread within the police organization. Interviewees spoke of gardaí calling them ‘knackers’, its rhyming alternative ‘cream cracker’, or other derogatory terms. One garda officer noted that official discouragement of the term ‘knackers’ had led some officers to substitute it with ‘stills’, on the basis that Travellers are still ‘knackers’.

A Garda Human Rights Audit found that relations with Travellers were worse than with any other social group asked about. Only 15 per cent of officers believed that relations between the force and Travellers were ‘good’, while 35 per cent claimed they were ‘poor’. A higher proportion of officers claimed that their personal relations with Travellers were better than this, but even here officers still ranked their relations with Travellers worse than with any other group, including ‘refugees and asylum-seekers’ and ‘black and other ethnic minority communities’ (Ionann Management Consultants, 2004: 84).

Public satisfaction with the police in Ireland is typically considered high by international standards. While surveys during the 2000s recorded a slight decline in satisfaction levels, the most recent survey in 2008 recorded an overall satisfaction rate of 81 per cent (Browne, 2008). A 2007 report from the Garda Research Unit (Walker, 2007) found that, notwithstanding the methodological difficulties in obtaining the sample, relations between the police and different ethnic minority communities were largely positive, with satisfaction ratings that (surprisingly) exceeded the 81 per cent reported in the 2007 national survey. For example, 90 per cent of ‘Black African’ and 93 per cent of ‘Chinese’ respondents expressed satisfaction with the police (Walker, 2007: Tables 5 and 6). However, the findings in relation to Travellers were stark. Overall, a total of 52 per cent of Traveller respondents stated they were satisfied/very satisfied with the police, and 48 per cent were dissatisfied/very dissatisfied. By a considerable margin this was the lowest level of satisfaction, and the highest level of dissatisfaction, reported by any ethnic minority group, or in any of the national surveys. Such levels of dissatisfaction are likely related to the experience of policing reported in that survey. It found that 43 per cent of Travellers stated that a garda had behaved towards them in an unacceptable way, compared to 6 per cent for ‘migrants’ and 12 per cent for ‘refugees’ (Walker, 2007: Table 38), and 7.5 per cent of respondents in the general survey conducted in the same year (Browne, 2008: Table 49).

Policing Strategies of Spatial Regulation

Governance is predicated on information and the surveillance that accompanies and generates it. In terms of policing, Travellers remain elusive to many of the information demands that mobilize police activities and measure organizational behaviour (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997). The surveillance function inherent in monitoring a population – and in more prosaic terms, the need to check names, addresses and other spatially relevant information – is directly undermined by nomadism and its ethos of unpredictable transience over predictable sedentarism. As one officer put it: ‘You’d need a special unit really to deal with them. You would, really, to keep track of them. Because you see they’re moving all the time. How do you police someone with no address? “The Field, Tallaght”?’ ⁴

Police hostility towards Travellers reflects the dominant social imagery of Travellers as being grossly irresponsible, and innately criminal and violent. For many police officers, their mobility reflects an inherent untrustworthiness, to the extent that obtaining accurate information from them is viewed as near-impossible: ‘They’re compulsive liars … to the point of not even telling you their name.’ The frustration evident in police depictions of Travellers frequently focuses on issues of disrepute – of dishonesty, criminality and disdain towards authority generally. As one officer put it, ‘probably any police force in the world will tell you they’re the most frustrating people to deal with … truth just goes out of the door … they don’t trust anybody in officialdom’ (see also Coxhead, 2007). As a consequence, even gardaí who appear highly sensitive and responsive to the needs of Travellers view them as ‘very difficult to police, absolutely’. They are, in policing terms, ‘out of place’, and as one Traveller interviewee put it, this involves policing strategies of ‘control, containment and harassment’. Another echoed this, characterizing the police’s approach to Travellers as ‘a tendency either to go towards heavy-handed policing, or a kind of hands-off approach’. The following sections elaborate these broad points by highlighting police recourse to and reliance on strategies of spatial regulation in dealing with Irish Travellers.

Conclusion

This article argues that a logic of spatial regulation shapes the manner in which Travellers are policed in decisive ways. This operates against a backdrop of moral disdain towards Travellers which persistently constructs them as a criminogenic community, and which gives rise to the over-policing and under-protection that characterizes their involvement with the criminal justice system. It confirms international research findings that the policing of Travellers is mobilized by a concern with territorial governance, both in terms of addressing the mobility of Travellers, as well as in containing their behaviour within specified Traveller zones – the view that Travellers are ‘alright in their own place’, as one garda tellingly put it. The article highlights potential limitations of the policing diversity agenda, and in that respect it argues for a more differentiated approach to the delivery of policing services to marginalized communities.

Clearly, given the limited number of interviews with Travellers in particular, appropriate care must be taken in interpreting the findings, and it is clear that further research on the issues highlighted in this article is warranted. Given the limited but compelling evidence available highlighting Travellers’ deeply contentious engagement with the criminal justice system, a victimization survey focusing on Travellers could help highlight the scale and dynamics of the issues involved (see Browne, 2008). Nevertheless, in respect of relations between policing and Travellers in Ireland, several issues warrant further discussion here.

First, the scale of the challenge to improve relations between police and Travellers is daunting. Despite some positive examples, the legacy of mutual mistrust outlined in this article continues to confound efforts to provide an effective policing service to Travellers, and even with the advent of the diversity agenda, the policing of Travellers remains deeply troubling. Police legitimacy in Ireland historically was based on an ethos of ‘informalism’ whereby the police claimed to be an innate part of the community (Mulcahy, 2008). While this may have gratified those who claimed strong affiliations with the police, it ensured that marginal groups who fell outside the imagined community at the heart of Irish cultural nationalism – Travellers chief among them – were subject to troubling policing practices, with a consequent impact on their confidence in and support for the police (Conway, 2010; Mulcahy and O’Mahony, 2005). A Garda Research Unit survey found that just over half of Travellers expressed satisfaction with the police, but that is poor consolation for the fact that their relationship with the police appears to be considerably worse than that of other ethnic minority communities in Ireland (Walker, 2007).

Second, this article has focused on the Irish context specifically, but the issues considered here resonate with debates elsewhere. Researchers have highlighted the emergence of ‘itinerant crime groups’ in continental Europe (Van Daele and Vander Beken, 2010), while in Britain ‘New Age’ Travellers and Travellers of Irish descent have been the focus of considerable political and public debate (James, 2006, 2007), and Irish Travellers in particular have become a modern-day folk devil across British society (Richardson, 2007). A range of policy responses has emerged, including legislation (for example, the Housing Act 2004) and government department circulars (Office of Deputy Prime Minister, 2006) which seek to regulate the provision of accommodation and other matters. However, as high-profile events such as the evictions of Travellers from Dale Farm in Essex demonstrate, the difficulties of securing planning permission for Traveller encampments are formidable, and the eviction process itself remains hugely controversial with the potential to lead to major conflict with the police and other agencies, as well as to highlight ongoing difficulties in the relationships between Travellers and settled people.

Third, the spatial regulation of Travellers itself reflects the origins of professional policing, and wider practices of surveillance and social control in modern society. From the outset, the establishment of a professional police force was oriented towards the pacification of burgeoning urban centres and the unruly masses drawn to them. By seeking ‘to outlaw the social promiscuity of the urban crowd’ (Cohen, 1981: 103–104), the police would impose a new order that would facilitate the development of industrial capitalism and the social transformations accompanying it. Yet in many ways, despite a broadening of the concept of citizenship, this early pattern of policing has remained central to contemporary forms of social control. The literature on crime prevention repeatedly highlights the uneven geographic distribution of crime, victimization and engagement (and entanglement) with the criminal justice system. ‘Hot spots’, ‘problem places’ and visions of ‘community’ continue to animate understandings of and responses to crime (Braga and Weisburd, 2010; Crawford, 1997; Hughes, 2007). Moreover, those whose behaviour is deemed antagonistic to our understanding of space – for example, by undermining the ethos of ‘consumer friendly’ shopping and leisure areas, or by posing some potential threat to public order due to their ascribed status as ‘monstrous Others’ (Young, 1999) – can effectively be subjected to a modern-day version of banishment through a combination of criminal and civil measures (exclusion orders, anti-social behaviour orders, simply being moved on by the police and so on). Yet, as Beckett and Herbert (2009: 157) argue, the resolution that such measures purport to yield is temporary and, ultimately, ‘an illusion’. As they argue: ‘The Banished are likely to return. After all, where else are they to go?’

Finally, following on from the above, diversity measures that seek to respond to the needs of Travellers without recognizing and addressing the spatial context of their marginalization are likely to have, at best, only a limited impact. Tellingly, the key driver behind the emergence of Ireland’s policing diversity agenda (An Garda Síochána, 2009) was the migration of ‘new’ minority ethnic communities that accompanied the huge expansion of the Celtic tiger economy. It bore no relation whatsoever to a sudden change in policy and practice towards Travellers specifically. Poor relations between Travellers and the police preceded the introduction of these measures, and it is likely that they will outlast them also, unless appropriate measures are introduced that specifically address the marginalization of Travellers. The fact that police action against Travellers was (and continues to be) largely mobilized by requests from the settled population highlights their secondary status. It also suggests that improving relations between Travellers and the police extends far beyond organizational measures such as training and liaison (Power, 2007), and instead largely rests on changes in the broader social field within which the police operate (Chan, 1997; Coxhead, 2007). Police efforts to mediate in feuds, and to provide an enhanced response to domestic violence are two key areas that potentially could improve relations with Travellers, but effecting significant long-term improvements to this relationship is unlikely in the absence of wider measures to address Travellers’ marginalization, and in particular finding a resolution to the ongoing crisis of Traveller accommodation. This requires a policy response that involves not just the police, but also the co-operation and political will of local authorities and other relevant agencies (see, for example, Cemlyn et al., 2009: ch. 2), qualities sorely lacking from this process thus far. The failure to resolve the accommodation crisis facing Travellers underpins their marginal status in Irish society, and is a key dimension to the problematic relationship between Travellers and the police.