Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
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EPUB and EPDF available open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
How can we use evidence to improve deradicalisation and violence prevention outcomes?
Based on work developed during the implementation of the cross-European INDEED project, this is an essential reference book for practitioners, researchers and policy makers. It sets out the three pillars of best evidence-based practice – scientific evidence, professional judgement and consideration of clients’ preferences, values and beliefs. Demonstrating both successful and unsuccessful approaches with case studies from the field, the book offers practical strategies for prevention teams designing and evaluating their programmes.
Traffickers are ever more sophisticated in their recruitment and control of victims, their seizure of new opportunities and ability to adapt to changing social conditions and efforts to prevent the trade in human beings.
This book presents a unique model to assist professionals, researchers and policy makers by providing a new theory that describes and explains how patterns of trafficking and exploitation emerge and are sustained over time.
It critically evaluates the international development of current legal, policy and practice developments in the field of anti-trafficking and argues that these are based on overly simplistic and reductive analyses of the problem. As such they are inadequate in addressing the complex, non-linear and adaptive nature of the phenomenon.
Focusing on factors that influence the relationships and interactions between the victim, offender and environment, this innovative model equips professionals to consider prevention, protection, intervention and disruption activity rather than limiting action to criminal justice-related outcomes.
Each point is illustrated with case study examples from the author’s own practice experience and research and from the work of his colleagues involved in investigating, disrupting and prosecuting traffickers and identifying and supporting victims towards safety and recovery.
Bringing a unique rural lens to the analysis of dark tourism in Australia, this book covers a range of sites including convict museums, sites of serial killings and colonial violence, ghost tours and the emerging tourism of bushfire sites.
While some rural communities develop a ‘dark tourism strategy’ to maintain economic viability, others may distance themselves from what they perceive to be unethical tourism practices. Jenny Wise examines the roles geographical locations play in dark tourist sites, and how their histories are portrayed, considering how the concept of the rural idyll or dystopia plays a part in Australia’s national identity.
Focusing on Ghana, the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence from European colonial rule and the first in the world to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, this book explores how dominant children’s rights principles interact with the lived realities of a range of children’s lives.
The author considers the changeability and inconsistencies of childhoods within this context and the factors that underpin these varied intersections, including cultural norms, British colonial legacy, the influence of Christianity, urbanization, and social, economic and political transformations.
Challenging one-dimensional portrayals of childhoods in the Global South, the author highlights the need for more holistic approaches to the study of children’s lives and children’s rights realization in Southern contexts.
The ultimate expression of power is the ability to act beyond the confines of law, with contemporary society enabling elite groups to wield “panoramic power”. From the murderous crimes of the corporate giants that provide us with life’s luxuries and necessities to the data gathering activities of media and educational institutions, the authors offer new thinking on damaging structures of power and privilege.
This accessible book provides a comprehensive understanding of elite corporate wrongdoing, and the late capitalist society that enables harm, considering both how we got into this mess and how we get out of it.
Policy development and implementation has a pivotal role in the youth justice system, profoundly impacting professionals and the children they work with. This imaginative book challenges limited explanations of policy-making as linear and government-dominated through original research into the practices, identities and relationships of a wide range of stakeholders working in multiple policy- making contexts in England and Wales.
The result is a detailed expert analysis of the contexts and mechanisms of youth justice policy-making. This book is key reading for researchers, professionals and students seeking effective understandings and responses to the long term social problem of youth offending.
In our pursuit of efficiency in the lower criminal courts, have we lost sight of quality justice? Through the critical examination of original stenographic data, this book demonstrates how an English Magistrates’ courthouse often pursued managerial efficiency to the detriment of social justice and procedural due process values.
Given that these courts process more than 95% of all criminal cases, this ‘over-efficiency’ problem has the capacity to cause significant social harm. Yates’s work concludes by providing socio-legal and criminological readers with ways to fix this over-efficiency problem. This accessible work is of value to policy makers and post-graduate students alike.
Available open access digitally under CC BY-NC-ND licence.
‘Desistance’ – understanding how people move away from offending – has become a significant policy focus in recent years, with desistance thinking transplanted from the adult to the youth justice system in England and Wales. This book is the first to critique this approach to justice-involved children, many of whom are yet to fully develop an identity (criminal or otherwise) from which to ‘desist’.
Featuring voices from academia, policy and practice, this book explores practical approaches to desistance with children in the ‘Child First’ context. It gives new insights into how children can be supported to move away from offending and proposes reforms to make a meaningful difference to children’s lives.
Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence
This book examines what happens when states and other authorities use detention to abuse their power, deter dissent and maintain social hierarchies.
Written by an author with decades of practical experience in the human rights field, the book examines a variety of scenarios where individuals are unlawfully detained in violation of their most basic rights to personal liberty and exposes the many fallacies associated with arbitrary detention.
Proposing solutions for future policy to scrutinise processes, this is a call for greater respect for the rule of law and human rights.
Crime research has grown substantially over the past decade, with a rise in evidence-informed approaches to criminal justice, statistics-driven decision-making and predictive analytics. The fuel that has driven this growth is data – and one of its most pressing challenges is the lack of research on the use and interpretation of data sources.
This accessible, engaging book closes that gap for researchers, practitioners and students. International researchers and crime analysts discuss the strengths, perils and opportunities of the data sources and tools now available and their best use in informing sound public policy and criminal justice practice.
