Still on the road? Technology and historical perspectives on counter-cultural policing

Abstract

Technological development in the last 20 years has had a significant input into what is policed and how such policing takes place. This article seeks to explore the policing of a part of the counter-culture in the United Kingdom, the so-called ‘New Age Traveller’, and in doing so highlight the impact of technology in relation to public order control.

Keywords:

• travellers
• public order
• technology
• policing

Notes

1. See Home Office (1981), Review of the Public Order Act and related legislation, Cmnd 7981, and Law Commission (1982).

2. See ‘Defiant hippies’ (1992). A local resident suggests that ‘… there is total anarchy on the common and it is a complete no-go area for the police because they are so outnumbered …’.

3. Metropolitan Police (n.d.).