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.