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
The Greek island of Lesvos is frequently the subject of news reports on the refugee ‘crisis’, but they only occasionally focus on the dire living conditions of asylum seekers already present on the island. Through direct experience as an activist in Lesvos refugee camps and detention centres, Iliadou gives voice to those with lived experiences of state violence.
The author considers the escalation of EU border regime and deterrence policies seen in the past decade alongside their present impacts. Asking why the social harm and suffering border crossers experience is normalised and rendered invisible, the book highlights the collective, global responsibility for safeguarding refugees’ human rights.
Do digital networks make a difference to the scope, scale and severity of social harm? Considering four distinct digital affordances for crime (access, concealment, evasion and incitement) this book asks whether they are simply new packaging for old problems, with no greater effect on society overall – or is cyberculture significantly escalating illegality?
Matthew David gives fresh insights into online harms and behaviours in the fields of hate, obscenity, corruptions of citizenship and appropriation, offering a comprehensive and integrated approach for those both new and experienced in the field of cybercrime.
Digital media technologies have enabled some LGBTQ individuals and communities to successfully organise for basic rights and justice. But these technologies can also present risks, such as online and in-person harassment and assault, and unsettled standards of privacy and consent.
Justin Ellis provides new insights on LGBTQ identity formation through social media networks and platform biometrics. Drawing on debate over gender, procreation, religion, nationalism and tech-regulation, he considers the effects of surveillance technologies on LGBTQ agency. In doing so, he brings an interdisciplinary ‘digiqueer’ perspective to negotiations of LGBTQ identity through case studies of digital harms from case law, parliamentary debates, social and mainstream media and LGBTQ-tech advocacy.
There is growing recognition that torture is too narrowly defined in law, and that psychological and/or sexualised violence against women is not adequately recognised as torture.
Clearly defining torturous violence, this book offers scholars and practitioners critical reflections on how torture is defined, and the implications that narrow definitions may have on survivors. Drawing on over a decade of research and interviews with psychologists, practitioners, and women seeking asylum, it sets out the implications of the social silencing of torture, and torturous violence specifically. It invites us to consider alternative ways to understand and address the impacts of physical, sexualised and psychological abuses.
Ten percent of the world’s population lives on islands, but until now the place and space characteristics of islands in criminological theory have not been deeply considered. This book moves beyond the question of whether islands have more, or less, crime than other places, and instead addresses issues of how, and by whom, crime is defined in island settings, which crimes are policed and visible, and who is subject to regulation. These questions are informed by ‘the politics of place and belonging’ and the distinctive social networks and normative structures of island communities.
Throughout the world, vulnerable subjects are being deceived into entering an abusive journey, in the organ trade, exploitative labour business, and forced criminality – and their lives will never be the same.
This book traces the journey of victims/survivors of modern slavery and human trafficking into and within the UK, from recruitment to representation to (re)integration. Using global comparative case studies, it discusses recruitment tactics and demand, prevention in supply chains, issues with effective legal protection and care services, vulnerability to re-trafficking and the ideological misrepresentation of vulnerable migrants and victims/survivors in media, the film industry, legislation, and more.
Rooted in diverse practitioner experience, disciplines and empirical research, this book bridges the experience-research-practice-policy gap by bringing to the fore survivors’ voices. In doing so, it offers crucial suggestions for better public awareness, policies and practices that will impact interventions in the UK and beyond.
Boys and young men have been previously overlooked in domestic violence and abuse policy and practice, particularly in the case of boys who are criminalised and labelled as gang-involved by the time they reach their teens.
Jade Levell offers radical and important insights into how boys in this context navigate their journey to manhood with the constant presence of violence in their lives, in addition to poverty and racial marginalisation. Of equal interest to academics and front-line practitioners, the book highlights the narratives of these young men and makes practice recommendations for supporting these ‘hidden victims’.
This accessible book introduces the key concepts and theoretical developments of queer criminology and explains what they mean for modern criminal justice frameworks and practitioners.
The book sets out experiences of the LGBTQ+ population as victims, offenders and professionals in legal systems in the US and internationally and explores what they mean for elements of those systems including police, courts, corrections and victims’ services. It is both a useful reference point for academics, students and professionals and a guide to how queer criminology can be theoretically applied and practically implemented in the worlds of policing, courts, corrections, and victims’ services.
The Black Lives Matter movement has exposed the state violence and social devaluation that Black populations continue to suffer. Police shootings and incarceration inequalities in the US and UK are just two examples of the legacy of slavery today.
This book offers a criminological exploration of the case for slavery and anti-Black racism reparations in the context of the enduring harms and differential treatment of Black citizens. Through critical analysis of legal arguments and reviewing recent court actions, it refutes the policy perspectives that argue against reparations.
Highlighting the human rights abuses inherent to and arising from slavery and ongoing racism, this book calls for governments to take responsibility for the impact of ongoing racialized injustice.
There is increasing pressure on the humanities to justify their value and on criminology to undertake interdisciplinary research. In this book, Rafe McGregor establishes a new interdisciplinary methodology, ‘criminological criticism’, harnessing the synergy between literary studies and critical criminology to produce genuine interventions in social reality.
McGregor practices criminological criticism on George Miller’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’, Prime Video’s ‘Carnival Row’ and J.K. Rowling’s ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’, demonstrating how these popular allegories provide insights into the harms of sexism, racism and class prejudice.
This book proposes a model for collaboration between literary studies and critical criminology that is beneficial to the humanities, the social sciences and society.
