Policy Press

Human rights and civil rights

Human rights and civil rights are one of the most important and fundamental parts of our society, offering guarantees of equal social opportunities and equal protection under the law, regardless of race, religion, gender or other personal characteristics. However these rights are not always universally upheld, leading to extereme injustices around the world.

The books below explore these rights and the impact being denied these rights can have on both individuals and societies. 

Bristol University Press and Policy Press are signed up to the UN SDG Publishers Compact. In this cross-cutting theme, we aim to address the following goal:

SDG Publishers compact logoSDG 10

You may also be interested in our Global Social Challenge on justice, law and human rights.

Showing 109-120 of 200 items.

Reparations and Anti-Black Racism

A Criminological Exploration of the Harms of Slavery and Racialized Injustice

Police shootings and incarceration inequalities are two examples of the legacy of slavery in the US and UK. Offering a criminological exploration of the case for slavery and anti-black racism reparations in the context of enduring harms and differential treatment of black citizens, this book refutes the policy perspectives that oppose reparations.

Bristol Uni Press

Advancing Children’s Rights in Detention

A Model for International Reform

Drawing on Ireland’s experience of transforming law, policy and practice and combining theory with real-life experiences, this compelling book demonstrates how a progressive rights-based approach to child detention can be implemented.

Bristol Uni Press

Women, Precarious Work and Care

The Failure of Family-friendly Rights

Drawing on interviews with women in precarious work, this text explores the everyday problems they face balancing work and care responsibilities. This crucial book exposes the failures of family-friendly rights and explains how to grant these women effective rights in the wake of COVID-19.

Bristol Uni Press

The Legal Aid Market

Challenges for Publicly Funded Immigration and Asylum Legal Representation

Presenting a rare picture of the barristers, solicitors and caseworkers practising immigration law in charities and private firms, this book offers fresh thinking on what has gone wrong in the legal aid market. In doing so, this book examines supply and demand, challenges existing legal aid policy and proposes insights for steps forward.

Policy Press

The Pre-Crime Society

Crime, Culture and Control in the Ultramodern Age

We live in a pre-crime society where technological strategies and techniques are employed to achieve hyper-securitization. Exploring theories, technologies and institutional practices, this pioneering book explains how the pre-crime society operates in the ‘ultramodern’ age and proposes new directions in crime control policy.

Bristol Uni Press

Pandemic Legalities

Legal Responses to COVID-19 – Justice and Social Responsibility

Edited by Dave Cowan and Ann Mumford

This important text maps out ways in which the disadvantaged have been affected by legal responses to COVID-19. Contributors tackle issues including virtual trials, adult social care, racism, tax and spending, education and more. Offering an account of the damage, this book demonstrates positive and productive future responses.

Bristol Uni Press

Religion and Marriage Law

The Need for Reform

Successive governments have made progressive, but ad hoc reforms to marriage law in Britain. This book provides the first accessible guide to how contemporary marriage law interacts with religion. It reveals the need for the consolidation, modernisation and reform of marriage law and sets out proposals for transformation.

Bristol Uni Press

A Watershed Moment for Social Policy and Human Rights?

Where Next for the UK Post-COVID

This book demonstrates that an alternative approach to social policy, based on human rights and social justice, is necessary to tackle the existing systemic inequalities brought to the foreground by COVID-19.

Policy Press

Justice in a Time of Austerity

Stories From a System in Crisis

Dan Newman and Jon Robins combine investigative journalism and academic scholarship to examine how the lives of people suffering problems with benefits, debt, family, housing and immigration are made harder by cuts to the civil justice system.

Bristol Uni Press

Reimagining Black Art and Criminology

A New Criminological Imagination

Martin Glynn explores the relevance black artistic contributions have for understanding crime and justice. Through art forms including black crime fiction, black theatre and black music, this book brings attention to marginalized perspectives within mainstream criminology.

Bristol Uni Press

Law Through the Life Course

This book is the first to explore the interactions of the law with the life course in order to understand the complex life journey as a whole. Jonathan Herring reveals how the law privileges “middle age” to the detriment of the whole life story and explains why an understanding of the life course is important for lawyers.

Bristol Uni Press

Cyberflashing

Recognising Harms, Reforming Laws

Cyberflashing has been on the rise since the Covid-19 pandemic. This book provides new analysis into the harms of cyberflashing. This timely and unique study considers recent laws in several countries and sets out proposals to criminalise cyberflashing in English law.

Bristol Uni Press