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
In Chapter Six, the book concludes by arguing for a broad approach to open justice that recognises the importance of public participation in a model of justice system accountability and does not wholly rely on the news media as a proxy for transparency.
The authors suggest implementing more nuanced and evidence-based approaches to open justice that respond to advances in digital technologies and, in doing so, also attempt to lessen systemic and individualistic harms, including stigmatisation. Recommendations centre on widening public interest court reporting, improving justice data availability and accountability, and increasing resources and investment in the facilitation of public access.
Such an approach prioritises public legal education and access to justice, as well as effective scrutiny of the criminal justice system. The authors contend that the practical application of open justice demands regular scrutiny and debate, to take account of changes in the way that society and the courts work. Overall, their work demonstrates how the principle can be effectively dissected, by attending to the practical realities of its application, and by testing its objectives through socio-legal research.
Chapter Two provides historical context on the way in which open justice and accountability have developed in England and Wales. It considers modes of accountability in the criminal process, public participation in the criminal courts, and its development in recent decades.
It looks at the place of open justice in a wider tradition of justice system accountability, sitting alongside and underpinning other important tools. As part of this exercise, the authors detail the main methods for contemporary observation of physical criminal court hearings and access to different information types, drawing attention to the main obstacles and gatekeepers.
They also explore the main theoretical rationales for the contemporary approach to open justice which, it is suggested, can be categorised as punitive (shaming), deterring, educational, scrutable (ensuring fairness and proper conduct). The chapter then critiques these various arguments, proposing that understandings of justice system accountability need to recognise their weaknesses and strengths.
The authors introduce one of their core arguments, that policy and law makers should prioritise informational transparency as a means of scrutiny and education, rather than as a means of an individual’s punishment and deterrence.
Chapter Five draws attention to a much-overlooked aspect of open justice: the implications and side-effects of publicity, arising from both the availability and unavailability of information. Some of these effects have been amplified by digital technology, such as the development of global search engines which are perceived to create indefinite online records of individuals’ criminal convictions.
Undoubtedly, there is a cost and human impact to publicity of criminal court proceedings, whether it is justified as unavoidable collateral harm of the process – or seen as an unwarranted and damaging intrusion of privacy. But equally, in other contexts, there can be a cost for freedom of expression and access to justice in the absence of information.
Though the authors cannot offer full answers based on their preliminary research on the impact of publicity on defendants in the criminal courts (indeed, they contend, some tensions between privacy and transparency can never be ironed out), they propose that systems should be designed to maximise equal and fair outcomes; minimise unnecessary stigmatisation and intrusion on the individuals; and avoid further entrenching existing societal exclusion and inequalities.
This first chapter introduces the book’s focal theme: the principle and practice of open justice in criminal courts in what is often characterised as the ‘digital age’. That is, the way in which court hearings and information about cases are made publicly accessible in the context of digital and technological advances in the 21st century, and the relationship to principles of transparency, access to justice and accountability.
The authors introduce recent developments in open justice policy and technology in England and Wales that raise, they contend, neglected practical and ideological issues relating to access to justice, individuals’ privacy, and public access to information.
As well as setting out the authors’ methodological approach and the core themes of participatory accountability and transparency, the chapter explains why the book pays particular attention to the functioning and scrutiny of the Magistrates’ courts within the criminal justice system.
Chapter Three considers the operationalisation of open justice in the context of modernisation, digitalisation and data developments. It focuses on aspects of the HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) programme of modernisation and digital reform including the Single Justice Procedure (SJP) for the prosecution of minor offences, video-enabled justice (VEJ), as well as digitalisation of data processes.
The authors consider a range of questions: how is information about an entirely administrative or virtual process communicated to the public? How is justice system data being collected, processed, and disseminated online, by different public and private sector actors? And to what extent do digital court processes enable the public to engage in the justice system and hold it to account?
The chapter also looks at equality of access to digital justice systems, in terms of funding, technological and legal literacy, as well as access to tools. In this context, the authors discuss power relationships and how technology is changing the dynamic and interactions of the digital and physical court room, making participation more difficult and undermining justice system accountability.
This book examines how major but often under-scrutinised legal, social, and technological developments have affected the transparency and accountability of the criminal justice process.
Drawing on empirical and evaluative studies, as well as their own research experiences, the authors explore key legal policy issues such as equality of access, remote and virtual courts, justice system data management, and the roles of public and media observers.
Highlighting the implications of recent changes for access to justice, offender rehabilitation, and public access to information, the book proposes a framework for open justice which prioritises public legal education and justice system accountability.
Chapter Four delves beneath the surface level understanding of open justice, looking at the mechanics of the principle: the roles of different media and civil society actors, the design of the channels and platforms and the financial costs (among other features). Because of the idiosyncratically decentralised and piecemeal nature of the justice system, many practices have evolved over time, in inefficient and unjust ways, without purposive design. Some of the inconsistencies have become more apparent and problematic in virtual environments.
As well as attending to the practical detail of court observers’ work, the authors unpack the rationales justifying observers’ presence in court and begin to develop a conceptualisation of open justice that thinks beyond the news media and traditional model of court reporting, despite the trend for limiting certain access to the ‘accredited’ press. In doing so, they consider factors of ‘justice-worthiness’ as well as the ‘newsworthiness’ of cases in court. The chapter also exposes how systemic failures are often mechanical rather than legal faults.
Cyberflashing is a sexual intrusion that infringes sexual autonomy and can induce significant harms. For these reasons, we have argued that there is a role for the criminal law in targeting cyberflashing so that victim-survivors’ voices are heard, their experiences recognised and there are effective means to prosecute offenders and seek redress. In addition, the criminal law can provide a valuable normative foundation for prevention and education initiatives.
Accordingly, this chapter recommends a bespoke offence specifically criminalising cyberflashing and we set out the key criteria to be considered in any such reform. As well as this specific crime, we raise the possibility of a broader sexual offence that would encompass cyberflashing, as well as a wider range of abusive and intrusive practices. We suggest that the potential of such a reform needs to be considered in the context of a much-needed review of the scope and reach of sexual offence laws more generally, taking into account the changing nature of perpetration, particularly advancing technology and online abuse.
The major benefit in an offence directly targeting cyberflashing is that its expressive function will be to the fore. The expressive function plays two particular roles, the first being prevention. It makes it known that these behaviours are now considered wrong, potentially harmful and consequently are being made subject to society’s most coercive state power, the criminal law. Together with campaigns and other public awareness-raising measures, this may begin to shift norms and aid prevention initiatives. In short, it may become less acceptable to send unsolicited penis images. Second, naming this harm and taking steps to prevent and punish it, gives victim-survivors a sense of hermeneutical justice: they are now better understood, their experiences now recognised; they are not alone.
Cyberflashing has been on the rise since the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, despite its prevalence and significant harms, cyberflashing is not a criminal offence in England and Wales.
This crucial book provides new in-depth analysis, understanding and insight into the nature and harms of cyberflashing. The authors consider recently adopted laws in the US, Singapore and Scotland, and set out proposals to criminalise cyberflashing as a sexual offence in English law.
This unique and timely study presents the first comprehensive examination of cyberflashing and the need to reform the criminal law.
The criminal law in England and Wales is currently failing victim-survivors of cyberflashing. Despite its prevalence and potentially harmful impacts, cyberflashing is not clearly a criminal act, leaving victims and criminal justice personnel navigating a labyrinth of possible offences. This is not to suggest that cyberflashing cannot be prosecuted: it could be. However, the law is not clear, the hurdles are many and therefore prosecutions are unlikely.
Before making the case for broader law reform in the chapters that follow, we examine here the current English criminal law as it might be applied to cyberflashing. We identify the many challenges facing any prosecution, including requirements to prove motives that are not always present or dominant in cyberflashing cases; demonstrating that penis images are applicable to provisions centring on morality-based concepts such as indecency, obscenity and offensiveness; and navigating laws which protect people in physical, public spaces, rather than in online environments. In essence, the law has ultimately failed to keep pace with the emergent ways in which sexual violence is being perpetrated through new and evolving technological mediums.
As cyberflashing constitutes a sexual intrusion, and parallels other forms of criminalised sexual violence, we first examine the applicability of existing sexual offences. As there is a criminal law against ‘flashing’ – section 66 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 – it might be assumed this covers cyberflashing. Given the similarities between the two forms of abuse, there appears to be no reason why this should not be the case.
