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.
Books: Research
The chapter details how the summary justice process is challenging for court users because of the nature of oral evidence-giving processes and also because the courts place significant externalities on defendants. This chapter provides a comprehensive understanding of the procedural difficulties within the justice system. A key focus of discussion in this chapter is how the summary justice process is not fair for court users.
This chapter sets the stage for a comprehensive analysis of efficiency in the summary justice process. It introduces a theoretical and conceptual framework that builds on the work of Packer (1968), MacDonald (2008), and Ward (2016). In doing so, this chapter makes clear that ideas of efficiency (cost-saving, waste-mitigation, time-trimming, and so on) can contribute to a substantiated, quality justice process. Importantly, however, the criminal justice process must also prioritize values that relate to philosophies of social justice and procedural due process. Indeed, when efficiency does not have this secondary status, the quality of the summary justice process is eroded: the process becomes overly-efficient. Additionally, this chapter outlines the present work’s case-study methodology and its main objective: to sensitize readers to the problems of a justice process that is uncritically committed to efficiency.
This chapter explores the modern history of efficiency reform in the English and Welsh summary justice process. The chapter examines the impact of neoliberalism, New Public Management, and post-managerialism, along with the pivotal roles of New Labour, austerity measures and Conservative government policies. It highlights significant efficiency reforms, offering insights into how these changes have shaped the current state of the summary justice process. Of note are those policies that relate to cooperative case management, the early guilty plea scheme, live link technology, legal aid provisions, the amateurism/professional role of magistrates and, finally, the courts use of diversion. By providing this historical context, the chapter establishes a robust foundation for the study’s subsequent critical discussions.
In our pursuit of efficiency in the lower criminal courts, have we lost sight of quality justice? Through the critical examination of original stenographic data, this book demonstrates how an English Magistrates’ courthouse often pursued managerial efficiency to the detriment of social justice and procedural due process values.
Given that these courts process more than 95% of all criminal cases, this ‘over-efficiency’ problem has the capacity to cause significant social harm. Yates’s work concludes by providing socio-legal and criminological readers with ways to fix this over-efficiency problem. This accessible work is of value to policy makers and post-graduate students alike.
Building from the prior data analysis chapters, this chapter argues that the courts are largely characterized by the concept of over-efficiency (as first discussed in Chapter 1). This chapter then offers six efficiency-focused policy reforms that would enhance the lower criminal court process. The evidence-based reform recommendations presented in this chapter argue for slower justice in some contexts, more specialized services and a shift towards creating an adversity-free process for court users.
This chapter explores the theme of ‘speed-focused managerialism’ within the summary justice process. It critically analyses the roles of district judges and magistrates as managerial leaders and examines the cooperative case management practices of solicitors. The chapter also delves into how workgroups manage defendants, emphasizing the problematic impact of managerial, efficiency-focused approaches on the justice process. This analysis provides a nuanced understanding of the managerial culture in courts and its influence on the pace and nature of legal proceedings.
This chapter sheds light on the underutilization of mental health diversion processes and the inadequacies in handling cases related to substance abuse and homelessness. It also addresses the absence of processes tailored for defendants who experience multiple, compounded forms of social disadvantage. Through this analysis, the chapter underscores the need for more specialized and individualized approaches in the justice system.
‘Human trafficking’ represents a complex global concern plagued by definitional ambiguities, ideological disagreements, and the (un)intended harmful consequences of anti-trafficking measures. Despite well-established critical scholarship that exposes the ‘collateral damage’ caused by these measures, research funding continues to support top down research endeavours aimed at identifying, rescuing, sorting, labelling, classifying, and rehabilitating vulnerable people on the move. These colonial forms of research often justify harmful anti-trafficking measures; producing new measures that often neglect the experiences and perceptions of the targets of such interventions. Whilst it is recognised that anti-trafficking research carries a problematic political epistemology, researchers often argue that there is a need for more research on ‘trafficking victims’ or ‘survivors’. In this chapter, I caution against exclusive victim-centred research, which may deepen boundaries between deserving and undeserving subjects of knowledge and protection. To address this concern, I provide a detailed account in this chapter of an academic Participatory Action Research (PAR) conducted in a post-disaster Himalayan location in Nepal, often stigmatized as a ‘hotspot’ of human trafficking. This PAR engages with people considered as targets of anti-trafficking who are attempting to undo the stigma of trafficking attached to their place. In this chapter, I illustrate the messy sites, capturing tensions, failures, and emotionally charged moments that lead to disruptions during the research process. These disruptions raise questions about both the perception and translation of dense power relations and the significance of the knowledge produced amid multiplicity for everyone involved in the research process. Through this chapter, I advocate for an inclusive and situated approach to trafficking research that acknowledges the full spectrum of mobility and labour experiences, challenging dominant trafficking research that deepen boundaries between victims and non-victims.
In the post-Brexit context increased attention is (correctly) being paid to the heightened risks of labour exploitation for EU migrants. The removal of free movement-facilitated access to the labour market, and the loss of associated social rights stemming from Union citizenship, contribute to the enhanced vulnerability of EU migrants to exploitative treatment. However, even under the auspices of the free movement framework, exploitation has been part of (some) EU migrants’ experiences in the UK labour market over many years. In particular, migrants from the Central and Eastern European (CEE) states that acceded to the EU in 2004 and 2007 have been more heavily concentrated in sectors of the labour market in which slippage along the continuum from poor treatment in employment to more severe forms of labour exploitation is more common. These migrants have had a higher visibility as victims of the types of exploitation deemed to constitute modern slavery than EU migrants from the older member states. This can be traced back to the way in which ‘free’ movement was extended to the new EU citizens at the time of EU enlargement. CEE accession migrants’ access to the labour market was conditioned on their willingness to carry out low-skilled roles to plug gaps in the (pre-2008 financial crash) labour market. The curtailed nature of the original access rights has ongoing implications for the treatment that migrants from the CEE accession states experience in the workplace. Moreover, the restrictive trajectory of immigration policy generally, and the move towards limiting support for those identified as victims of modern slavery specifically – encapsulated in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and Illegal Migration Act 2023 – offers little solace for the future to any migrants who experience exploitation in the UK.
There is nothing new or uniquely modern about exploitation. Yet this idea of ‘newness’ continues to dominate, with numerous exploitative practices drawn under the elastic construct of modern slavery and/or human trafficking. The image on the front cover was therefore selected not simply because it is aesthetically appealing but also because the kaleidoscope represents how this interdisciplinary volume has been drawn together. A kaleidoscope is traditionally thought of as a toy ‘consisting of a tube containing mirrors and pieces of coloured glass or paper, whose reflections produce changing patterns that are visible through an eyehole when the tube is rotated’. This creation of constantly changing patterns or the sequence of objects and elements illustrates both the issue of modern slavery and its perceived ‘newness’. The contributors interrogate the construct of modern slavery and anti-trafficking discourse which have dominated contemporary responses to and understandings of exploitation. Through providing insights and evidence we need to continue navigating a different path – beyond the racialized legacy of anti-trafficking and fears of modern slavery
