The Culture of Crime Examining Representations of Irish Travelers in Traveller and the Riches

Summary

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Irish Travelers are frequently equated with crime. This culture-of-crime stereotype is reproduced through media culture. In this article I will analyze the 1997 film Traveller and the first season of the 2007 television series The Riches to see how the criminal stigma is repeatedly (re) ascribed to Irish Travelers. I identify two cultural discourses in Traveller. First, the "culture as practice" discourse grants admission to a cultural group based on what one does. Second, the "culture as nature" discourse views cultural belonging in a biologically deterministic fashion. These two discourses overlap, and Irish Traveler culture is still depicted as a culture of crime. The Riches reproduces this stereotype, as the only way Irish Travelers can lead a "normal" life is too steal a buffer's identity. Both of these examples lead to questioning whether invisibility or visibility solely as criminals is preferable.

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The Culture of Crime Examining Representations of Irish Travelers in Traveller and the Riches

"Some call us Gypsies, others call us thieves, most though don t even know we exist." Opening credit voice over, The Riches (2007)

One of the dominant images of Irish Travelers is of a culture of crime (Lucassen, Willems, and Cottaar 1998; Crowley 2005; Drummond 2006; Hayes 2006). In the United States, Irish Travelers are "a group", we are told, "best known around the country for their scams" (McShan 2007) and police in North Carolina refer to certain crimes as the "Irish Traveler scam" (Salisbury Post, 2008). This is further made evident through the many specialized police units and "Gypsy crime" detectives found throughout the United States that are dedicated solely to deal with Gypsy and Traveler crime.1 These specialists gather annually for what is euphemistically called the National Association of Bunco2 Investigators3 (for an article with brief interviews with several participants of this conference, see Becerra 2006). In October 2007 they hosted a Transient Criminal Activity Conference4 in Seattle, Washington, which has sessions entitled "Introduction to the Rom" and "The Travelers". This focus on criminality is not limited to the US, as the GARDA - the Irish national police service - collected data on the "criminal tendencies" of Irish Travelers (Crowley 2005: 135).

The criminal stereotypes ascribed to Irish Travelers are constructed and reproduced in newspapers, literature, film, and television (see also Morris 2000; Drummond 2006). These are aspects ...

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