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 1400 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
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Sexual assault research, and other forms of gender-based violence (GBV), has focused nearly exclusively on urban areas, ignoring the documented differences between metropolitan and rural communities. Additionally, as research has indicated, many juvenile and criminal justice system involved girls and women enter the system with histories filled with chronic traumatic experiences, including extensive histories of sexual violence. Using a feminist criminology foundation, this chapter adds to the understanding of girls’ and young women’s experiences with sexual assault in their rural communities, with specific interest in gaining insight into how ‘close-knit’ environments respond to survivors of sexual violence. Data were gathered through a larger project incorporating interviews with one rural Midwestern state’s only population of incarcerated youth and young women as well as community stakeholders. Open-coding identified that while community workers believe survivors are seeking faith-based organisations for assistance, at-risk young women are not directed to such individuals. Family status influences how communities respond to survivors of sexual violence – in some instances, survivors are ignored, in other cases, their abuses are criminalised. While the community perception is that at-risk young women are seeking help from their religious leaders, this pathway to ‘help’ may be specific to citizens already involved within their faith communities – a sample of patrons that do not include outsider families. Yet, policy implications would encourage collaborative work, both domestically and internationally, with faith-based organisations and other community providers to ensure holistic services for all rural survivors.
This chapter focuses on the effects of austerity governance policies, or deep cuts to social programmes that fall disproportionately on rural rape crisis centres (RCCs). These policies operate in such a way that leads not just to increased barriers for survivors accessing services in rural areas but adds to further harm for survivors and the people who serve them. Data come from 22 in-depth interviews with executive directors of RCCs in a Midwestern state, with 11 interviews from providers in rural counties. Respondents were asked about their experiences during a two-year state-wide budget impasse where RCCs and other social services received no money from the state, losing up to 80 per cent of their operating budgets overnight for an indefinite (at the time) period. The data show rural RCCs were hit harder than their non-rural counterparts throughout the state, revealing themes of hardship and uncertainty along with strategies for survival such as using volunteers more, laying off or furloughing staff, and relying on lines of credit to pay staff and overheads. These issues are an example of how austerity governance policies fall disproportionately on services relied upon by women and marginalised groups and reinscribe harm, constituting another form of gendered violence.
Gender-based violence (GBV) can take many forms and have detrimental effects across generations and cultures. The triangulation of GBV, rurality and rural culture is a challenging and essential topic and this edited collection provides an innovative analysis of GBV in rural communities. Focusing on under-studied and/or oppressed groups such as immigrants and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, the book explores new theories on patterns of violence. Giving insights into GBV education and prevention, the text introduces community justice and victim advocacy approaches to tackling issues of GBV in rural areas. From policy review into actionable change, the authors examine best practices to positively affect the lives of survivors.
Rural domestic violence is a growing area of scholarship; yet, more research is needed to fully grasp survivors’ lived experiences. This chapter leverages my own community-based, action-oriented ethnographic research from a rural community in the western United States to convey grassroots lived experiences of rural domestic violence survivors. It serves as a window into the nexus at which rurality, domestic violence and inequality meet; in particular, this chapter delineates what is known about domestic violence in rural locales and the ways it disproportionately impacts those most vulnerable. Importantly, survivors’ lived experiences raise awareness about the unique, intersectional dimensions of rural domestic violence. This includes issues pertaining to transportation in a rural environment, cultural and religious forces that shape staying in and/or leaving abusive circumstances, and rural social isolation. From these findings, the chapter offers suggestions for ways to better address rural domestic and gendered violence, offering a path forward for future scholarship and social action.
Gender-based violence (GBV) takes many forms, including direct physical, psychological, emotional and economic abuse, and indirect abuses such as intentional gender blindness. These actions, or inactions, can have detrimental effects across generations and cultures. The triangulation of GBV, rurality and rural culture has become a challenging, yet essential, topic. The discussion on rural crime is also timely and urgent when considering most criminological theories in the Western world focus on urban settings. Since the definition of rural and rurality differs worldwide, the study of the phenomena of violence and rurality needs innovative, sophisticated and up-to-date methodologies. In this text, readers explore the most current research about GBV in the United States with implications that can be applied internationally, with chapters utilising qualitative and quantitative methods. Chapters are rich and diverse in topics, focused on oppressed groups such as immigrants and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual and ally plus (LGBTQIA+), by exploring new theories on the patterns of violence with a spotlight on patriarchy. Chapters examine best practices to positively affect the lives of survivors – moving from policy review into actionable change. The text collects a series of research and agency reports that provide a holistic view of GBV in rural communities. The text also emphasises insights on the prevention and education of GBV from youth to college-aged adults. The text introduces interdisciplinary approaches (such as community justice and non-profit victim advocacy work) to tackle intersectional issues of GBV in rural areas.
Gender-based violence (GBV) has profound effects on victims in rural areas due to culturally constructed gender roles, the density of acquaintanceship, the stigma of abuse and poverty, a lack of access to housing and services, and other challenges. It is important to examine and explore theories of violence in rural communities and provide policy recommendations to service providers to better respond to unique circumstances. The current text is a new addition to understanding GBV in rural America. Issues of domestic violence and sexual assault in rural communities have not been well studied due to a lack of accessible data and seminal mainstream criminological research focused on densely populated areas. As an example, feminist criminology has helped advance the academic understanding of GBV, providing a critical framework for understanding patriarchy and gender-specific issues. Other concerns, such as the geopolitics and lack of services and legal support that tend to reinforce violence, victimisation and girls’ delinquencies, are emerging issues in the field of rural justice. Researchers and practitioners are eager to understand the causes and provide effective policies to address the recurring problems.
This chapter examines news coverage about transgender people murdered in Louisiana from 2010 to 2020. We present a content analysis of 84 articles about 16 victims in rural and urban markets. Specifically, we ask, how does community context influence the quantity and quality of reporting on murders of transgender people? Overall, we found that most articles included in this study did not deadname, misgender or otherwise stigmatise victims. However, we found that misgendering and/or deadnaming is more likely to occur when articles are reporting on official sources such as police reports or court records. Additionally, family members also contribute to confusion in media reports about an individual’s name and gender identity. In terms of community context, we found that a larger proportion of rural publications deadnamed or misgendered victims compared to urban publications. Finally, we observe that rural publications may be more likely to engage in deadnaming and misgendering due to a lack of resources and reliance on wire services for content. However, we argue that such articles can and should be edited to avoid othering transgender people.
Research on gender-based violence (GBV) across place has consistently demonstrated rural/urban differences in violence prevalence and risk as well as context-specific barriers to accessing services and community-level resources for prevention and intervention. Although the definition of rurality is central to this line of inquiry, how it should be operationalised continues to be debated among scholars. In criminological studies, ‘place’ is often defined in terms of discrete categories: rural, suburban or urban. Discrete definitions of place obscure intragroup differences which may account for a variety of characteristics that likely contribute to GBV perpetration and effective prevention and intervention. Further, the commonly used rural/urban categorisations, based on thresholds of population density, population size and level of commuting, often result in labelling areas as urban that might qualitatively be considered rural. For example, most areas with the highest yields of agriculture products in the United States are considered to be in metropolitan statistical areas (that is, they are proximal to large cities and in areas with high commuting rates, and therefore in counties that are not considered rural) even though most would consider farmland to be inherently rural places. This chapter will contribute to theoretical framings of rural GBV by presenting different operationalisations of rurality in the United States and critically addressing the use of discrete and continuous measures of rurality in GBV research.
This chapter looks at how issues around rights, partiality and accountability test the luck-neutralization impulse that is at the core of luck egalitarianism. The chapter reviews Williams’ arguments on equality, counterposing them to Nozick’s outright rejection of the egalitarian terms of reference. This is to show the limits of both liberal and conservative critiques of equality as well as open the door to assess whether Marxian conceptions of equality might have more merit.
We live within institutional arrangements which influence our ways of thinking and responding to the world around us. Those institutions often seem part of the natural order of things – necessary and immovable, defining particular social artefacts as problems and predefining the range of possible responses, reforms, and solutions. The institution of policing is no exception, and its historical weight carries us along well-trodden paths. Instrumental arguments by policymakers, politicians, and police administrators reconfirm the necessity of the police to control crime and to uphold the law, even as a wealth of evidence throws into question the basic claims of these assertions. Indeed, the problems of police violence, ineffectiveness and corruption are as old as the institution of policing itself. It is important to recognise that policing is a socio-historical process that maintains itself for reasons other than controlling crime. The history of policing tells us much about the control and maintenance of social divisions including class, race, gender, disability, and their intersections and about the economic exploitation of labour and political control. The history of policing also alerts us to the use of power, both at the local level and more broadly through macro socio-historical movements of colonialism and imperialism. The history of colonial policing is important to understanding contemporary calls to Defund the Police.
