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
Amid the shift towards neoliberalism and the privatization of resources, this book provides a radical new lens to view property and property theory.
Boldly challenging the conventional theories of property law that have shaped our understanding for centuries, leading expert Paddy Ireland explores the rise and growth of new intangible property forms; the nature of ‘investment’ and of property-as-capital; and the empirical realities of modern property.
Raising broader questions about ownership in society, the author ignites a powerful conversation about the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth, forcing us to confront that our current property system bears considerable responsibility for the current ‘polycrisis.
This groundbreaking work will set the agenda for a new era in property theory.
Compelling and robust, this book provides an analysis of challenges in public service outsourcing and considers how to avoid failure in the future.
Crucially, it proposes a governance mechanism where outsourcing public services nurtures a less extractive corporate form that is oriented towards a productive purpose beyond maximising shareholder value, with implications well beyond public services. Under these proposals, fostering purpose-driven companies that are independently governed and use profit to pursue purpose can improve both public services and wider economic organisation.
Examining how barriers to implementing this idea within the existing EU and UK legal frameworks may be addressed, the book formulates actionable policy proposals.
This book aims to revitalise the link between social justice and labour law through exploring the issue of personhood and the ‘subject’ of the law.
Rodgers argues that incorporating a more ‘relational’ notion of self into labour law not only provides a fresh normative perspective through which to evaluate existing labour laws, but will also make us more able to respond to labour market ‘shocks’ and labour market change into the future, including the introduction of AI.
It is only by embedding relationality into our law that can we really respect the humanity of workers and construct a legal framework through which social justice can be achieved at work.
This profound book by leading socio-legal scholar Joshua Castellino offers a fresh perspective on the lingering legacies of colonization.
While decolonization liberated territories, it left the root causes of historical injustice unaddressed. Governance change did not address past wrongs and transferred injustice through political and financial architectures.
Castellino presents a five-point plan aimed at system redress through reparations that addresses the colonially induced climate crisis through equitable and sustainable means.
In highlighting the structural legacy of colonial crimes, Castellino provides insights into the complexities of contemporary societies, showing how legal frameworks could foster a fairer, more just world.
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.
This thought-provoking collection brings together academics from a range of disciplines to examine modern slavery.
It illustrates how different disciplinary positions, methodologies and perspectives form and clash together through a kaleidoscopic view and forms a unique insight into critical modern slavery studies. Providing a platform to critique the legal, ideological and political responses to the issue, experts interrogate the construct of modern slavery and the anti-trafficking discourse which have dominated contemporary responses to and understandings of exploitation.
Drawing from real-world examples across the world, this is a vital contribution to the study of modern slavery.
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.
The use of a rape victim’s sexual history as evidence attracted intense public attention after the acquittal of footballer Ched Evans in 2017. Set within the context of a criminal justice system widely perceived to be failing rape victims, the use of sexual history evidence remains a flashpoint of contention around rape law reform.
This accessible book mounts an important interrogation into the use of a victim’s sexual history as evidence in rape trials. Adopting a critical multidisciplinary perspective underpinned by feminist theory, the authors explore the role and significance of sexual history evidence in criminal justice responses to rape.
How big a problem is torture? Are the right things being done to prevent it? What does the UN do, and why does is appear at times to be so impotent in the face of torture?
In this vitally important work, Malcolm D. Evans tells the story of torture prevention under international law, setting out what is really taking place in places of detention around the world. Challenging assumptions about torture’s root causes, he calls for what is needed to enable us to be in a better position to bring about change.
The author draws on over ten years’ experience as the Chair of the United Nations Sub-Committee for Prevention of Torture to give a frank account of the remarkable capacities of this system, what it has achieved in practice, what it has not been able to achieve – and most importantly, why.
This book exposes how inequalities based on class and social background arise from employment practices in the digital age. It considers instances where social media is used in hiring to infiltrate private lives and hide job advertisements based on locality; where algorithms assess socio-economic data to filter candidates; where human interviewers are replaced by artificial intelligence with design that disadvantages users of classed language; and where already vulnerable groups become victims of digitalisation and remote work.
The author examines whether these practices create risks of discrimination based on certain protected attributes, including "social origin" in international labour law and laws in Australia and South Africa, "social condition" and "family status" in laws within Canada, and others. The book proposes essential law reform and improvements to workplace policy.
