Rebecca Shaw As one of the first recipients of the inaugural ESRC Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre’s ECR Development Fund, I have spent the past year working with domestic abuse service providers in Leeds, West Yorkshire and York to assess their perceptions regarding ‘dominant narratives’ of domestic abuse. Designed in collaboration with my partners (Leeds Women’s Aid, Behind Closed Doors, Fresh Futures and Foundations +Choices), the aim of this project was to identify what kinds of systemic and structural narratives persist in preventing change and to co-design potential st ..read more

Helen Kosc Helen is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Oxford, Department of Sociology. For the last 18 months, Helen has conducted a long-term and large-scale ethnographic study of prison resettlement. She has shadowed the resettlement journeys of 150 men released from one, local category B prison over the course of 1.5 years. In both her participant observation and her qualitative, sequential interviews with the men, she hears men saying time and time again: In here, at least I’m a number. Out there I am no one. There is nothing for me to look forward to out there. I’d rather be in h ..read more

Julian Molina The publication of the first British Crime Survey in 1983 represented a significant breakthrough for understanding crime patterns. For the Home Office, the survey aimed to address a ‘crisis’ in British crime statistics. It used survey techniques and expertise to address long-standing concerns about the quality and accuracy of police-recorded crime statistics. Today, the survey has evolved into the Crime Survey for England & Wales and, according to one of the survey’s original designers, it is a ‘juggernaut mainly concerned with administrative procedures.’ In this blog, I wan ..read more

Anda Iulia Solea Incels, short for involuntary celibates, represent an online subculture associated with misogyny, anti-feminism and the endorsement of and involvement in acts of online and offline violence. Originally congregating on fringe online forums such as 4chan, the incel subculture has drawn the focus of academic and media literature, primarily examining its community and content within secluded online platforms. However, there has been a notable lack of research concerning the incel presence and manifestation on mainstream social media platforms. My doctoral research centres on the ..read more

Reka Solymosi and Carly Lightowlers The connection between crime, including violence, and deprivation is firmly established, and many studies seek to deploy measures of deprivation in analyses of crime. One approach to conceptualising and operationalising deprivation commonly used in England is the English indices of deprivation 2019, specifically the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). The IMD operationalises deprivation and provides a useful tool to understand the link between crime and deprivation. However, the IMD is not without problems, as crime is included as one of the indicators of ..read more

Lauren Doyle Social media and the digital space are now a part of the daily lives of so many across the world; in place to enhance global communication, the sharing of information and the growth of diet culture and influencer culture [online cultural spaces]. With this, the sharing of information is not always authentic, nor is the imagery that we consume and base offline health and lifestyle goals around. This blog will discuss ongoing doctoral work that explores the lived experience of the normalisation of hostile self-talk and trolling across social media platforms. Alongside the impact th ..read more

Zoe Mitchell Use of the phrase ‘a few bad apples’ is one that is becoming increasingly familiar in British society to minimise allegations of harmful practice. One of the most recent institutional scandals to rock the British government, evidenced by the Gray report (2022) was its rule-breaking during national lockdowns. The public’s faith has been tested regarding the government’s ability to act in accordance with national expectations. As such, doubts have also been cast on its ability to govern and respond to institutions similarly rocked by societal mistrust and enhanced public scrutiny ..read more

Chaitanya M. Hegde and Aalokaa J. Verma Introduction The state of Tamil Nadu in India recently sought to legally defend the celebration of Jallikattu, a festival involving taming of bulls. While defending the festival before the Supreme Court of India, the state of Tamil Nadu submitted that merely because humans have a duty to protect animals, does not lead to the corresponding rights of animals. In doing so the state criticised the previous decision in Animal Welfare Board of India v A. Nagaraja (Nagaraja) for holding that “animals have statutory rights which have been raised virtually ..read more

Raven Bowen The Covid-19 pandemic, the cost-of-living and fuel crises, the war in Ukraine, in addition to geo-political decisions such as the choice to leave the European Union, have all had an impact on the income and lives of everyday people across the UK. In the context of our precarious labour market, some can gig and thrive as digital nomads or in lucrative careers, and others struggle through low-waged employment, unwaged work, or government disability and unemployment benefits. For many workers, during the pandemic, the Government’s scheme supported them to ‘stay home and stay safe’. O ..read more

Kyros Hadjisergis On the 18th of January 2023, the University of Wolverhampton’s School of Social Science and Humanities (Criminology and Criminal Justice) in association with the British Society of Criminology (BSC) – Midlands Regional Group hosted the Reimagining Probation and the Rehabilitation of Offenders conference at the University of Wolverhampton (City Campus). The conference explored new developments, research, and practices in probation and the rehabilitation of offenders with the aim to celebrate and disseminate recent work undertaken in probation in both academia and practice. Th ..read more