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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Using the National Socialist Order ([NSO], previously known as the Atomwaffen Division), as a case study, it is argued that the academic and policy literature regarding the NSO tends to inflate the actual threat posed. Significantly, prevention and countering actions by this group seem to lack an evidence-based approach. This chapter addresses a gap in the literature on the NSO by engaging critically with the group’s literature and that of individuals influencing its activities, highlighting key indicators that evidence a reluctance for terrorist violence. Research conducted on the publication Siege by James Mason and NSO propaganda highlights how it propels neo-Nazis towards violent action; however, little evaluation has been conducted foregrounding the indications within both which steer the NSO’s membership away from violent activism. Drawing on Beck’s ‘risk society’ and Busher et al’s ‘internal brakes’ this study illustrates the tension between inflated perceptions of risk and actual threat.
This chapter summarises and discusses current UK law which places a duty on groups of professionals to be able to spot, report and monitor the signs of radicalisation. Professionals from policing, education, healthcare and charity sectors were interviewed and discuss their experiences of radicalisation. From their understanding of the language of radicalisation to whether they feel confident with the duty placed upon them. Themes such as a reliance upon gut feeling, a lack of clarity of language and a reliance upon policing staff are discussed. Recommendations for policy are then offered to help improve practitioner confidence.
Chapter 2 is about the context to the emergence of lean platforms, and platform rhetoric, the inseparable constellation of stories, categories and semantic games used by platforms and their allies to frame and shape reality in a way intended to shape regulation through processes and trajectories that are described subsequently. The chapter describes the emergence of lean platforms in the context of the economic crisis, and their contradictory relationship with neoliberalism. The emergence and rapid growth of platforms benefited from the political economic context and a wider culture of deregulation; at the same time, platforms presented themselves as addressing the problems of the crisis and of neoliberalism. This leads into a discussion of the rise and fall of the morally laden notion of the Sharing Economy, a term which has long generated confusion, yet secured early institutional support. The chapter describes narratives around change and the future, where platforms are often framed as modernity and progress, important in denying the legitimacy of state regulation, and asserting the futility of resisting platform business aims: however, the evidence shows that resistance and regulation are significant in shaping outcomes. Finally, the language used by lean platforms, their ‘phrasebook’, is analysed, focusing in particular on the ways that work, platform corporations themselves, and democracy, are redefined.
Preventing crime and, failing that, alleviating the harm caused by crime, is one of the original and central tasks of the state. Crime preventive are measures and conditions that reduce the likelihood of crime being committed and/or reduce the harmful effects of crime. The measures can be divided into three types: (1) measures aimed at increasing external and internal prosocial control and decreasing antisocial control; (2) measures that reduce opportunities for crime and increase opportunities for a prosocial life; (3) measures to eliminate or reduce the harm caused by crime and provide justice for victims. Crime prevention can be implemented at primary (targeted at all), secondary (targeted at risk individuals, places, and so on) and tertiary (recidivism prevention) levels. Currently, there is limited knowledge about the efficacy of crime prevention measures. Greater effort should be made to determine whether such measures produce the intended results.
In this chapter, the authors propose an epistemological framework for the practice of crime prevention that is fully embraced by the evidence-based paradigm and framed by the field of problem-solving criminology. The chapter discusses how in the 1990s, the basis for evidence-based practice in criminology was created when scholars started to debate the importance of evaluating crime prevention interventions and claimed the necessity to know what worked, what did not, and what was promising. Determining the success of programmes, actions and strategies to prevent crime was deemed essential for rational policy and practice. Slowly but steadily, evaluation procedures were integrated into practice, in general, during the implementation period or when the preventive activities ended. Evaluators were given the responsibility to propose theories of change and logic models that would explain how interventions worked and, therefore, orient the evaluation. However, this way of action would reveal shortcomings in the application of evidence. On occasions, evaluability was compromised by the flaws of the interventions’ design and implementation. The alternative presented in the chapter is a solution for such problems.
This chapter focuses on the process of planning, designing and conducting an evidence-based evaluation. It explains why evaluation should be considered an integral part of the systematic process of designing a prevention initiative and how to derive its goals and methodology from the inherent standard elements of a long-term comprehensive preventive programme. Particular attention is paid to the issue of connections between programme objectives, indicators measuring its progress and evaluation, as an integral part of the programme’s logical model. It also explains the importance of grounding the evaluation of prevention initiatives in research evidence and focuses on the main types of evaluation such as formative, process and results’ evaluation. At the same time, it explains the difference between social research and programme evaluation.
The final chapter reprises the key arguments of the book and reflects on the implications of its findings for debates around corporate power, political activity and lobbying. It reflects on themes of innovation; social movements and civil society; and the new digital economy at large. It finishes by discussing, finally, the alternative ways that platforms and platform commentators have imagined the future. An increasing number of imaginaries and scenarios are circulating in this space. Arguments about contingency, critique and political struggle are beginning to displace and debunk prevailing narratives of technological determinism.
This chapter presents the key aims of the book, describing the development of controversy and contention in public debates and social science around digital platforms. It defines platforms, locates them in a particular political economic moment, and identifies four modes of platform politics: platform rhetoric; platform dissent; platform power; and platform possibility. It discusses the ubiquity of platform politics, but also the absence of reliable information and data, and introduces the sources used for the book: interviews with former platform public policy staff who developed and executed Airbnb’s repertoire of contention in 14 different countries, alongside documents, grey literature, secondary literature and media sources. It finally describes the organisation of the book, introducing each chapter.
