ABSTRACT
An effort is made to study the need for regulation and control of the criminal tribes and passing of certain regulatory Acts called Criminal Tribes Acts between the years 1871 and 1965. A gypsy way of life, necessitated by earlier trading activities, came to be described as vagrancy or a lust for wandering. There was a view amongst the British that the criminal tribes looked different from ordinary human beings in their physical appearance. Around the last part of the nineteenth century, on the basis of increased rate of crime, the administration mulled about the concept of heredity among criminals. Instead of being considered as wandering tribes they were classified as criminal tribes. The number of these tribes increased in the due course of time. A report prepared by the Tribal Cultural Research and Training Institute, Andhra Pradesh, cited 59 sects as denotified tribes of Andhra Pradesh.
