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It’s been some time since I last posted about my professional doctorate which examines policing service provision for Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers. Indeed, I’ve not posted very much over the last month or so, as I’ve submitted my thesis and been preparing for viva voce examination.
Continue reading “Doctoral Research | Update”It’s been a little while since I last updated on how my professional doctorate is coming along. I’m researching policing service provision for Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller groups in Scotland and the rest of the UK. I’ve had some really great data from both a policing perspective and from Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in Scotland. When I last blogged, I was just finishing up my interviews.
Continue reading “Doctoral Research | Update”It’s been a while since I gave an update on how my Professional Doctorate is coming along. My research examines how Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers experience the criminal justice system, and how agencies can change their service provision to better suit their needs.
After gathering information from the perspectives of service providers and publishing a paper based upon these findings, over the last few months I have been gathering the really insightful data – what Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers think, and whether what is framed as innovative practice really meets their needs.
Continue reading “Project Update | Update”After literature reviews, project upgrade reviews, and months of preparation and piloting, I’m delighted to finally start data collection for the first project of my professional doctorate. I’m examining how the criminal justice system can adapt to better serve the needs of Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in the UK. The first step in such an endeavour is to examine how police services go about providing services to GRT communities at present. This exploration of the status quo will allow me to discuss how engagement with GRT communities is carried out, what the barriers to and facilitators of effective engagement with these communities are, and whether there are innovations in service provision that could be transferred to Scotland.
Continue reading “Project Update | Doctorate”
I had a great deal of fun at the end of 2019 when I reviewed all of the research I’d had to carry out for my short stories throughout the year. Thorough inquiry is no guarantee of a good narrative (my wife, an excellent editor, has put several exhaustively researched but poorly written stories out of their misery), it is an end in itself.
Continue reading “Things I had to Research in 2020 | Blogging”
Morning folks,
I’ve been asked by the Scottish Institute for Policing Research to write a little piece about additional considerations during the Covid-19 pandemic. From engagement to explaining, to custody suites and Coronavirus legislation, I’ve tried to squeeze as much into 800 words as I could. I also discuss the impact Covid-19 has had on some of Scotland’s most vulnerable people and communities such as domestic abuse victims and Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller groups.
Continue reading “Policing Covid-19: Managing Risk During the Lockdown | Doctorate”
After having written extensively about the deviancy amplification of Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers by the media in my doctoral literature review, I awaited the release of ‘The Truth About Traveller Crime’ by Channel 4 with trepidation. It had received overwhelmingly negative reviews by those whom it sought to portray. Nevertheless, I was determined to give it a fair viewing and sat down to watch the show after a busy set of backshifts.
Continue reading “Dispatches – The Truth About Traveller Crime | Opinion”
To progress to SQVS level 12, or doctoral level, Professional Doctorate students must submit and defend a literature review on their area of expertise. Recently, it was my turn to present on how the criminal justice system can adapt to better serve the needs of Scottish Gypsy Travellers.
Continue reading “Upgrade Review | Doctorate”
Not my usual kind of post this morning but go with it…
I’m approaching the end of my first year as a doctoral student. Aside from the energy-sapping workload of juggling a family, research, a career, and a blog [insert applause here please], there is nothing that suggests to me that taking on a Professional Doctorate was a mistake or that my topic – Scottish Gypsy Traveller interaction with the Criminal Justice Service – was the wrong one to choose. Scottish Gypsy Travellers heritage and culture form an important part of modern Scotland. This culture celebrates close family values, an oral storytelling tradition, and mobility, whether corporeal or reflected as a symbolic identification with mobility and change. Nevertheless, discomfort with mobility on behalf of the sedentary majority in Scotland is still very much apparent. A lack of access to health services, poor political representation, biased and caricatured portrayal in the media, a non-assimilationist education system, and local authorities unwilling to tailor basic services to a semi-nomadic ethnicity all contribute to huge inequality between Scottish Gypsy Travellers and the rest of Scotland’s population. Continue reading “Serving a Semi-nomadic Community | Doctorate”
Matthew Richardson 