An Arc of Time Through Crime: Representations of Gypsies and Travellers in Police Killings

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 group. Sixty 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.