Lethal Force, Legal Consciousness and the Social Field of Policing

Abstract

In Death of a Traveller, the reader is immersed in the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Angelo, a thirty-seven-year-old man from the Traveller community in France. Angelo spent his life in and out of the criminal justice system. Two-thirds of the way through his sentence for non-violent thefts and driving without a license, having been released on home leave, he decided not to return to prison. He went to visit his family. This prompted a heavily armed, elite unit of two dozen gendarmerie to arrive at his family's farm in search of him. It did not take long to find him. Angelo was hiding, unarmed, in a lean-to within shouting distance of his family who were forcefully detained by gendarmes in the nearby yard. The officers entered the lean-to. An altercation took place. The officers emerged, unscathed. Angelo came out, dead. According to the officers, they shot Angelo in self-defence. The police investigators and public prosecutor accepted this. The judicial investigation dismissed the case. The appeals against the decision to bring no charges were rejected. So, "No homicide, therefore, no case to answer" (p. xiii).These basic facts that make up the book's real-life story are described by Fassin in the preface as 'simple' because of their grim familiarity: young men belonging to ethnic minorities who die as a result of encounters with the police; inquiries conducted by colleagues of the presumed perpetrators who confirm their account of the events; prosecutors and judges who decide not to pursue the case and accept their claim of legitimate self-defense.' (xiii).This picture is indeed one readers of Social & Legal Studies will likely be familiar with given the journal's recent coverage of racialized criminal justice practices, abuses of