Disciplining the Drifter: The Domestication of Travellers in the Netherlands.

Recent criminological literature, mainly based on experiences in the United States and the United Kingdom, suggests that Western societies have witnessed a shift from rehabilitation to repression and from inclusion to exclusion. However, in a socio-historical case study of national and local policies dealing with Travellers in the Netherlands—a group regarded as highly deviant—we found that rehabilitation remains the primary aim, albeit that the policy of rehabilitation recently has taken on a much more compulsory character. This policy can be conceived of as a practice of ‘repressive inclusion’. Only detailed and empirical research on policies directed at strategically chosen groups in different institutional settings can decide whether this policy of repressive inclusion is a specific Dutch experience or has a more general application.