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 of over 1500 titles.
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
You are looking at 1 - 10 of 67 items for :
- Type: Book x
- Law x
- Access: All content x
How big a problem is torture? Are the right things being done to prevent it? What does the UN do, and why does is appear at times to be so impotent in the face of torture?
In this vitally important work, Malcolm D. Evans tells the story of torture prevention under international law, setting out what is really taking place in places of detention around the world. Challenging assumptions about torture’s root causes, he calls for what is needed to enable us to be in a better position to bring about change.
The author draws on over ten years’ experience as the Chair of the United Nations Sub-Committee for Prevention of Torture to give a frank account of the remarkable capacities of this system, what it has achieved in practice, what it has not been able to achieve – and most importantly, why.
What role does dialogue play in peacebuilding? How can community-based activities contribute to broader peace processes? What can participatory research methods add to local efforts to build peace?
In this book the authors examine these questions through their work with two different Colombian communities who have pursued dialogue amidst ongoing violence, environmental injustice and socio-economic challenges. By reflecting on what people in these contrasting places have achieved through participatory peacebuilding, the authors explore different forms of local agency, the prospects for non-extractive academic engagement, and practical and theoretical lessons for participating in peace in other conflict-affected settings.
This book exposes how inequalities based on class and social background arise from employment practices in the digital age. It considers instances where social media is used in hiring to infiltrate private lives and hide job advertisements based on locality; where algorithms assess socio-economic data to filter candidates; where human interviewers are replaced by artificial intelligence with design that disadvantages users of classed language; and where already vulnerable groups become victims of digitalisation and remote work.
The author examines whether these practices create risks of discrimination based on certain protected attributes, including "social origin" in international labour law and laws in Australia and South Africa, "social condition" and "family status" in laws within Canada, and others. The book proposes essential law reform and improvements to workplace policy.
In recent times, Greece is often viewed as the gateway to Europe for high numbers of asylum-seeking individuals, including unaccompanied minors. Between 2016 and 2020, under Greek law unaccompanied children were to be temporarily placed in a protective environment upon irregular entry, pending referral to suitable accommodation. However, in practice, they were being subjected to detention procedures instead.
Giving voice to migrant children and professionals throughout, the author combines legal analysis with criminology and unveils the reality within detention facilities. The findings demonstrate that unaccompanied children in Greece are criminalised through detention processes, while being deprived of the right to be heard.
This book promotes child-friendly practices in the international migration context, with a view to safeguarding the fundamental rights of unaccompanied minors experiencing detention upon arrival in host countries.
Through the lenses of comparative and critical rhetoric, this book theorizes how alternative approaches to communication can transform legal meanings and legal outcomes, infusing them with more inclusive participation, equity and justice.
Viewing legal language through a radical lens, the book sets aside longstanding norms that derive from White and Euro-centric approaches in order to re-situate legal methods as products of new rhetorical models that come from diasporic and non-Western cultures.
The book urges readers to re-consider how they think about logic and rhetoric and to consider other ways of building knowledge that can heal the law’s current structures that often perpetuate and reinforce systems of privilege and power.
Taking a unique and critical approach to the study of Public Law, this book explores the main topics in UK Public Law from a range of underexplored perspectives and amplifies the voices of scholars who are underrepresented in the field. As such, it represents a much-needed complement to traditional textbooks in Public Law.
Including insights from a diverse list of contributors, the book:
-
Enriches students’ understanding of the dynamics that emerge within public law;
-
Highlights the impact of historical and societal inequities on public law norms;
-
Demonstrates the ways in which those norms may impact minorities and perpetuate inequalities.
With most chapters written by underrepresented or minoritised persons in the field, this text offers students a critical, rich, and insightful approach to public law.
With contributions from an international team of experts, this collection provides a much-needed international, comparative approach to mental capacity law.
The book focuses particularly on exploring substantive commonalities and divergences in normative orientation and practical application embedded in different legal frameworks. It draws together contributions from eleven different jurisdictions across Europe, Asia and the UK and explores what productive or unproductive values and practices currently exist.
By providing a detailed comparison of how legal and ethical commitments to persons with disabilities are framed in capacity law across different national systems, the book highlights the values and practices that could lead to changes that better respect persons with disabilities in mental capacity regimes.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
In principle, couples getting married in England and Wales can choose to do so in a way that reflects their beliefs. In practice, the possibility of doing so varies considerably depending on the religious or non-religious beliefs they hold.
To demonstrate this divergence, this book draws on the accounts of 170 individuals who had, or led, a wedding ceremony outside the legal framework. The authors examine what these ceremonies can tell us about how couples want to marry, and what aspects of the current law preclude them from doing so.
This new evidence shows how the current law does not reflect social understandings of what makes a wedding meaningful. As recommended by the Law Commission, reform is urgently needed.
Understanding prisons and the policies surrounding them is of fundamental importance to students and practitioners of criminology and related fields. This concise and accessible guide offers a compendium of key information, theories, concepts, research and policy, presenting a rounded and critical overview of the prison system in England and Wales.
Covering the historical and contemporary context of prisons, the text guides the reader through prison life as experienced by different groups such as women, the work of prison officers and a tour of international prisons.
Each chapter features key learning items:
-
an overview and summary;
-
learning outcomes;
-
end of chapter questions;
-
definitions of key terms and concepts;
-
examples and illustrative case studies;
-
summary boxes of key research studies and further reading.
Focusing on the experiences of stakeholder groups and the themes of power, legitimacy and rehabilitation, the book concludes with an overview of the future challenges for prisons.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence.
The #MeToo movement sparked many debates and increased the demand for more problematized perspectives on the issue of sexual harassment.
This book opens for new understandings of sexual harassment by bringing researchers, writers, and policymakers in the Nordic region into dialogue in an ambitious volume. It asks what role juridical frameworks can and should play in prevention and raises questions about how the image of Nordic states – as gender equal, colour blind and with strong welfare – affects the work against sexual harassment in the region.
Re-imagining definitions of justice, violence, exploitation and work, this book offers knowledge of immediate importance for everyone working to prevent sexual harassment, through research, policy making, or in everyday practice.
