It never fails to annoy me when it’s claimed that some group or other is the ‘last’ group that it’s acceptable to be prejudiced about. Sure, there’s no denying we live in relatively enlightened times, but there are any number of marginalised sections of society that you can get away with offending without any fear of backlash. Don’t believe me? Well, off the top of my head, how about people who are mentally ill, or transsexual, or poor and white (yes, the whole chav thing – it’s just sneering at people who are worse off than you; stop trying to justify it)?  Or how about gypsies? If you doubt that they face prejudice, try taking a look at definition 6 (or definitions 1,4 and 7, to a lesser extent) on urbandictionary’s entry for the word. (Yes, I’m well aware that part of the point of urban dictionary is to try to be shocking, but there‘s a difference between pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable for comedic purposes and simple bigotry. That’s clearly an example of the latter.)

Anyway, while I was vaguely aware that gypsies were marginalised and suffered prejudice, I knew very little about the context and origins of that prejudice, or indeed about gypsy culture at all, so a documentary on iPlayer that claimed to be about precisely that, I was pretty keen to watch it seemed a good chance to learn more. Admittedly it might have been a bit optimistic of me to expect so much from a documentary that had a title like Gypsy Child Thieves, but the blurb for the programme claimed it would show “the racism and discrimination suffered by the Romani people”. In fact there was far less background information than I’d have liked, and unfortunately – while I’m sure this wasn’t what filmmaker Liviu Tipurita intended – a worrying amount of ammunition for the bigots.

The film certainly delivered on the promise of the title; there was plenty of grainy footage of attempted robberies by young Roma children in Spain and Italy, as well as interviews with the same children back at the camps where they lived. And there was some genuinely shocking material as well: the way that the titular child thieves are beaten and coerced into a life of crime by their handlers (or their own parents), and the disturbing revelation that Romani girls are traditionally married off (and the marriages consummated) when they’re just 12 or 13 years old. There was also some footage of a street party held by the Lega Nord (a populist right-wing political party in Italy) to celebrate the destruction of a Romani camp, at which one man openly spoke of his desire to kill Gypsies. But if this film is all you’ve got to go on, antipathy towards Gypsies is almost made to seem understandable, as so much is left unexplained. Why do so many Romani people steal for a living? Why do they live in squalid camps on the outskirts of cities? Why do they so often refuse help from the Social Services? Why is it that they’re so marginalised all over Europe?

Even when Tipurita travelled to Romania (where many Roma who emigrate to Western Europe arrive from) with the supposed aim of finding answers to some of these questions, he didn’t really seem to get anywhere. The best we were given was an extended interview with Breliante, a Romani organised criminal who provided the illuminating insight that “the thieving is no longer a national problem. It’s happening on an international scale.” Liviu Tipurita is clearly a talented documentary-maker, but this felt like a serious missed opportunity.

You can watch Gypsy Child Thieves on iPlayer before 8pm on Wednesday the 9^th September, as long as you’re in the UK.