"Travellers" - rights, welfare, legalities?

[anonymous-user]

The issue can be that of "seeming to" run rings around the law. In fact, travellers make up what may be a disproportionate number of people processed by the criminal justice system and are quite heavily represented in the prison population, but the fact that the wheels of the system are turning isn't always visible.

[Rovinghawk]

Breadvan72 said:

The issue can be that of "seeming to" run rings around the law. In fact, travellers make up what may be a disproportionate number of people processed by the criminal justice system and are quite heavily represented in the prison population, but the fact that the wheels of the system are turning isn't always visible.

Picking arbitrary numbers purely to illustrate a point:

Travellers constitute 0.01% of the population but incur 5% of criminal penalties. This sounds like they're being disproportionally punished & the wheels of justice are running them down.
If, however, they commit 10% of the crimes then they're getting off disproportionally lightly.

I have seen travellers get away with stuff for which I would be punished. The reason was that it was too much like hard work. Whilst this sort of thing goes on there will be justifiable resentment.