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
This edited collection offers the first system-wide account of the impact of COVID-19 on crime and justice in England and Wales. It provides a critical discussion of the challenges faced by criminal justice agencies (prison, probation, youth justice, courts, police), professionals and service users in adapting to the extraordinary pressures of the pandemic on policy, practice and lived experience.
The text integrates first-hand narrative and artistic accounts from a variety of key stakeholders experiencing the Criminal Justice System (CJS). The editors recommend a range of evidence-based policy and practice improvements, not only in terms of planning for future pandemics, but also those that will benefit the CJS and its stakeholders in the longer term.
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:
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an overview and summary;
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learning outcomes;
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end of chapter questions;
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definitions of key terms and concepts;
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examples and illustrative case studies;
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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.
A key resource for students, academics and practitioners, this concise guide brings together various concepts vital to the theoretical, policy and practical debates on forensic psychology and its relationship with crime, policing and policing studies.
Covering issues such as criminal behaviour, police decision-making and crime scene investigation, each entry provides a succinct overview of the topic, together with an evaluation of the emerging issues. The text includes:
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associated concepts and further reading from research and practice;
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sample questions;
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references and glossary.
In western liberal democracies the police are viewed as guardians of public safety and enforcers of the law. How accurate is this? Given police violence and the failure of many attempts at reform, attention has turned to other models of managing criminality, including defunding the police and instead funding alternatives to criminalization and incarceration.
This book is the first comprehensive overview of police divestment, using international examples and case studies to reimagine community safety beyond policing and imprisonment.
Showcasing a range of practical examples, this topical book will be relevant for academics, policy makers, activists and all those interested in the Black Lives Matter movement, protest movements and the renewed interest in policing and abolitionism more generally.
Women and families within the criminal justice system (CJS) are increasingly the focus of research and this book considers the timely issues of intersectionality, violence and gender. With insights from frontline practice and from the lived experiences of women, the collection examines prison experiences in a post-COVID-19 world, domestic violence and the successes and failures of family support.
A companion to the first edited collection, Critical Reflections on Women, Family, Crime and Justice, the book sheds new light on the challenges and experiences of women and families who encounter the CJS.
Accessible to both academics and practitioners and with real-world policy recommendations, this collection demonstrates how positive change can be achieved.
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.
From the denial of abortion rights in Ireland to sexual violence against British South Asian women in England, the state and its institutions continue to fail women. This book offers a counter narrative to contemporary injustices and a persistent culture of victim-blaming.
The academic and activist contributions to this collection explore contemporary research areas and pursue new discursive directions in order to present a feminist criminology, built on feminist praxis, for the twenty-first century.
Providing a direct challenge to regressive and ineffective theory, policy and practice, this book resists the politics of gendered victimisation through extending feminist analyses of the state and documenting interventions into contemporary injustices.
For many children and young people, Britain is a harmful society in which to grow up. This book contextualises the violence that occurs between a small number of young people within a wider perspective on social harm.
Aimed at academics, youth workers and policymakers, the book presents a new way to make sense of this pressing social problem. The authors also propose measures to substantially improve the lives of Britain’s young people – in areas ranging from the early years, to youth services and the criminal justice system.
Timely and urgent, this book examines the culture and governance of colleges and universities regarding both excess in elite student societies and sexual violence, particularly against female students. Taking into account the deaths, serious injuries and grave sexual abuse taking place among student populations, the book takes a criminological and sociological perspective on the institutions, offenders and victims involved.
With high profile court cases and media responses driving demand for reform, the author considers institutional reactions and concludes with recommendations to improve crime prevention, accountability and the support for survivors.
Outlining the key developments of the Disability Hate Crime policy agenda, Seamus Taylor brings together a unique consideration of the theoretical and practical questions at its heart. This book analyses the contributions of activists, politicians, policy makers and criminal justice system practitioners to policy development, and critiques both the under-recognition of disability prejudice fuelled by ableism and the challenge of vulnerability in addressing disability hostility.
Concluding that a critically reflective approach on the part of policy makers and practitioners can lead to progress, the author gives clear policy recommendations to address current challenges in the Criminal Justice System.
