An arc of time through crime: Representations of gypsies and travellers in police killings

Phillips, Coretta, Taylor, Becky and James, Zoë (2026) An arc of time through crime: Representations of gypsies and travellers in police killings. British Journal of Criminology, 66 (5). pp. 899-915. ISSN 0007-0955

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Abstract

This paper examines newspaper stories reporting on the killings by Gypsy and Traveller offenders of PC Leslie Meehan in 1960 and PC Andrew Harper in 2019. These media representations are used as heuristic devices to explore differing media discourses about this white minority ethnic groupSixty years apart, these stories demonstrate supportive media commentary in the earlier period and more corrosive coverage in the recent period. Making a contribution to historical criminology and its consideration of race, this paper draws from extensive archival analysis and the extant literature. It highlights the political-economic significance of home ownership, the partial inclusion of Gypsies and Travellers in the multicultural polity, and broader trends towards increasing punitivism in criminal justice, as key explanatory factors in these different media and political representations.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	gypsies,travellers,history,newspapers,race,racism,pathology and forensic medicine,social psychology,arts and humanities (miscellaneous),law,sdg 16 - peace, justice and strong institutions ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2700/2734
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of History
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Migration Research Network
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication... https://academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-art...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	18 Sep 2025 09:32
Last Modified:	10 Sep 2026 11:18
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/100434
DOI:	10.1093/bjc/azaf072

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