“I think it’s quite dangerous to use someone else’s situation and try and predict someone else because you could be right, but you could be massively wrong.” There has been a step change in the practice of assessing and monitoring families, with police and child protection authorities turning to algorithmic analysis in an effort to forecast which families will need intervention. Digital sources of everyday administrative data on families – from education, health, benefits and police records etc. – are joined together, and algorithmic processing is applied to this linked data in an effort to id ..read more

Beyond Bars: A Path Forward from 50 Years of Mass Incarceration in the United States takes academic research and successfully delivers it into the public arena, to new non-academic audiences. The collection, edited by the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) and published in association with The Sentencing Project, a US research and advocacy centre working for decarceration, reflects on the lessons from the past half century and offers ideas and solutions for a path forward. “It’s good to have the research get into the hands of other academics and people in positions of politics or ..read more

This article is part of a blog series published in partnership with Academics Stand Against Poverty UK, as they develop their third manifesto audit in the build up to the 2024 election. They will analyse the policies in the manifestos in relation to poverty to asses how confident they are that they will enable British society to flourish.   Keir Starmer has declared that he will be more ‘laser-focused on poverty’ than Tony Blair. This is a welcome commitment. But can sustained cuts in poverty be achieved without a simultaneous attack on Britain’s yawning income and wealth gap? On this, St ..read more

Recent statistics show that work disability has increased in the UK, with more sick days being taken every day.  The main contributing factor to this trend is the rise in mental health problems. More individuals are being diagnosed with depression, anxiety or ADHD. There has been a growing demand for psychological services, and medical treatment is often sought. The individualistic explanations, such as lack of exercise, poor coping skills and excessive use of social media, often obscure how the ‘mental health crisis’ has actually matured and become a major social concern. Various groups ..read more

In this policy briefing, Mark Dobson and Gavin Parker, authors of Slow Planning?, show how policy decisions such as England’s ‘Project Speed’ agenda, have deployed multiple policy and reform efforts to service economic growth through timescaping attempts. Little attention has been paid by researchers to how time is deployed and managed in planning practice, yet it has become an increasingly important tool for governing the planning system in England and beyond. The regulation of time affects interests differently and the temporal governance of planning – what we term ‘timescaping’ – can have p ..read more

Last year I wrote a post to announce this forthcoming series. Now, I am delighted to say, it is no longer forthcoming – it’s here! The first book in the series, Photovoice Reimagined by Nicole Brown, is published today. There are three others scheduled for publication this year: Fiction and Research, by Becky Tipper and Leah Gilman, will be published in July; Doing Phenomenography, by Amanda Taylor-Beswick and Eva Hornung, will follow in September; and Encountering The World with i-Docs, by Ella Harris, will be available in December. Three more are currently in the writing phase, two proposals ..read more

Racial justice is never far from the headlines, but, although the ideals of the legal system such as fairness and equality seem allied to the struggle, campaigners have been all too often let down by the system. In this episode Jess Miles and Bharat Malkani, author of Racial Justice and the Limits of the Law, talk through cases like those of the Colston Four and Shamima Begum, to explore this paradox and establish where change is possible. Listen to the podcast here, or on your favourite podcast platform: Scroll down for shownotes. Racial Justice and the Limits of Law is available on the Bris ..read more

Numerous scholarly books and texts designed for classroom use about the field of corrections have been researched, written and published. The overall tenor of these works, however, is conservative, emphasising a management perspective, and outlining the nuts and bolts of how prisons work, the job functions of correctional workers, conditions inside correctional facilities, the different types of inmates, etc. There is an underlying logic to this instructional content. To begin with, corrections is typically taught in community colleges and universities as part of a larger curriculum in Crimino ..read more

In the bustling economy of South Korea, a hidden narrative unfolds – a story of labour precarity that reshapes the fabric of work and life in the 21st century. As we navigate through unparalleled economic challenges globally, the nuances of precarious employment in South Korea offer a critical lens for understanding labour market vulnerabilities worldwide. At the heart of this narrative is the concept of ‘melting labour’, a term I coined to capture the fluid and ever-changing forms of work that characterise the modern labour market. Unlike traditional (non-) standard or (in)formal work, meltin ..read more

This article is part of a blog series published in partnership with Academics Stand Against Poverty UK, as they develop their third manifesto audit in the build up to the 2024 election. They will analyse the policies in the manifestos in relation to poverty to asses how confident they are that they will enable British society to flourish.   From Ukraine to Gaza, the UK is at a crossroads in terms of how it steps up to the challenge of humanitarian aid and the eradication of poverty at a global level. The upcoming general election is a decisive moment to place aid and development back on t ..read more