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 1,500 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.
The book offers a theory of trafficking and modern slavery with implications for policy through an analysis of evidence, data, and law. Despite economic development, modern slavery persists all around the world. The book challenges the current fragmentation of theory and develops a synthesis of the root causes of trafficking chains. Trafficking concerns not only situations of vulnerability but their exploitation driven by profit-taking. The policy solution is not merely to treat the issue as one of crime but also concerns the regulation of the economy, better welfare, and social protections. Although data is incomplete, methods are improving to indicate its scale and distribution. Traditional assumptions of nation-state sovereignty are challenged by the significance of international law historically. Going beyond the polarization of the debates on sexual exploitation in the sex trade, the book offers an original empirical analysis that shows the importance of a focus on profit-taking. Although individual experience matters, the root causes of trafficking/modern slavery lie in intersecting regimes of inequality of gender regimes, capitalism, and the legacies of colonialism. The book shows the importance of coercion and theorizing society as a complex system.
Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This book offers a theory of trafficking and modern slavery with implications for policy. Despite economic development, modern slavery persists all around the world. The issue is not only one of crime but the regulation of the economy, better welfare and social protections.
Going beyond polarised debates on the sex trade, an original empirical analysis shows the importance of profit-taking. Although individual experience matters, the root causes lie in intersecting regimes of inequality of gender regimes, capitalism, and the legacies of colonialism. This book shows the importance of coercion and the societal complexities that perpetuate modern slavery.
What does trouble sound like and is it apparent when it is coming? Does the onset of violence have a sound and, if so, what does this tell us about assessing the climate for safety and survival? Two incidents – on the netting and a cell fire – are used to illustrate when a day has gone bad.
A Brendan Behan song about the triangle at Mountjoy, ‘The Auld Triangle’ forms the focus of a consideration of the cultural potency of the soundscape and its place in the cultural imagination. How does this explain the impact of the ‘jingle jangle’, and the ways prisoners mitigate and invert this by claiming ownership of ‘their jail’, the “biggest house in Midtown”?
The symbolic potency of the prison and how this manifests in the bells, whistles and ships of everyday life are considered here, before a broader picture of the problems and challenges facing Midtown and a creaking prison system. The relationship between Midtown and its broader community are reflected on, as well as the array of social problems threatening stability in the rip tide, both inside and out.
Focusing on the soundscape allowed for an understanding grounded amid community life. Power and order are frequently conflated in prisons literature, but listening revealed how understanding is obfuscated by this process and erroneous assumptions are made about the basis for order.
This chapter considers what sound reveals about how the emotional climate is assessed and ‘feeling’ can spread around the prison. What does a ‘bubbly’ day sound like and what are the implications of this for how we understand when trouble is coming? Changes in the environment following the tobacco ban and implications for mamba use offer illustration.
This chapter considers the challenges of rejoining life beyond the wall, and the time signature of life on the out. Using temporal vertigo as a starting point, this goes on to explore the jarring temporal dissonance of balancing awareness of both here and there and the challenges of leaving the prison behind for both prisoners and staff.
Here, the challenges of keeping busy when there is little to do are explored for what they reveal about contemporary prison life, with reference to work on punishment, the economy and unemployment. How to avoid enervating idleness in the absence of meaningful activity, work or education both inside and out?
The prison soundscape is a conduit of power and symbolic violence. Keys have a particular potency in a place which contains people, and where others are charged with their containment. This is instructive for what it reveals about the power of prison spaces, and the time and space traversing properties of sound.
