Research Projects
prisonHEALTH
prisonHEALTH is a group of multidisciplinary academics who deliver research to help improve health in detention and exists to encourage high-quality scholarship, engagement and knowledge transfer regarding all aspects of mental and physical health, in and around prisons and detention sites. Prison health and safety matters morally and affects health and safety across societies, impacting upon prisoners, prisoners’ families, prison staff and communities.
Our work centres around three overlapping themes:
- Highlighting the harms and questioning the rates of imprisonment
- Improving conditions and treatment in detention and upon release
- Facilitating evidence-based debates about detention across broader audiences
prisonHEALTH has members across academic subjects and faculties, providing distinctive depth and breadth of approach and expertise. It hosts multiple funded research projects. Members are currently concentrated at the University of Nottingham and benefit tremendously from expert partners at organisations including the Nuffield Trust, University of Chester and University of Manchester. prisonHEALTH hosts regular discussion groups with internal and external speakers.
RECEDE: Regulating Criminal Justice Detention (1 May 2022 – 30 Apr 2027)
Dr Philippa Tomczak has won £1.3m in European Research Council funding to develop the first ever model of criminal justice detention regulation, which could help to tackle the current prison and detention crises in England and Wales.
The study will encompass police, court and prison detention and escorted transport between detention sites, using England and Wales as a case study.
The project, called RECEDE, aims to highlight how detention regulation could improve health and safety in the criminal justice system, benefiting detainees and society more broadly.
Despite ‘world-renowned’ detention monitoring apparatuses, the UK has seen a dramatic decline in prison safety since 2012 and its imprisonment rates are amongst the highest in Western Europe.
SAFESOC: Prison Regulation for Safer Societies (1 Nov 2020 – 30 Oct 2024)
Dr Philippa Tomczak has been awarded a £1.2 million grant through the prestigious UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Leaders Fellowship programme to further her work into prison regulation for safer prisons and societies.
Over an initial four years, the fellowship will support Dr Tomczak, a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham, to reconceptualise prison regulation by including a broader range of representatives from multiple sectors – operating across stakeholder groups, from local to global scales. This will enable a step change in prison regulation and boost the potential to improve prison safety.
A six month secondment at the Scottish Parliament (2 Nov 2020 - 30 Apr 2021)
Dr Simon Roberts has been appointed an Academic Fellow at the Scottish Parliament to advise the Parliament and its members (MSPs) on the impact of Brexit on Scottish Social Security.
New powers transferred to the Scottish Parliament by The Scotland Act (2016) allow Scottish Ministers to develop new social security policies within a framework provided by The Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 which devolves eleven existing benefits to Scotland.
The aim of the Academic Fellowship is to carry out research to examine how these benefits will be treated in the Withdrawal Agreement as the EU Social Security Coordinating Regulations evolve; within any new multilateral agreement between the UK and EU; or, if there is no agreement, by unilateral arrangements by the EU and UK, including ‘retained legislation’, and bilateral agreements between the UK and individual EU member countries. Outputs will include written and oral briefings for MSPs and presentations to the Scottish Parliament.
Community-based sustainable rural development: The Case of Shumba Chieftaincy Modernisation Initiative (Nov 2020 - Feb 2021)
This project is a collaboration between the University of Nottingham, National Age Network of Zimbabwe (NANZ), The Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU), and Chief Shumba on the modernization agenda for the Shumba Chieftaincy, into a vibrant community-driven rural development programme.
With a recent change in leadership in the Shumba Chieftainship in Masvingo Province of Zimbabwe, the PI has been approached with an opportunity to establish a platform for evidence-based policy guidance and community engagement to meet the multiple and critical community challenges. These include threats to health and safety (exacerbated by COVID-19), food and nutrition insecurity (amplified by climate change), life and livelihoods decline (due to prolonged political, macro and micro economic poor performance), moral degradation and family disintegration (a result of rural to urban/regional/international migration).
The aim of this first stage of the project is to:
- carry out a demographic study (including needs assessment analysis and skills inventory)
- build a statistical database of the population that falls under the Shumba Chieftainship
The deliverable will be a demographic database that is searchable and updateable to guide efforts to improve decisions, initiate appropriate innovative developmental programmes and build sustainable collaborations and partnerships. This is the first step in the modernisation of the Shumba Chieftaincy under the planned five modernisation phases; namely the modernisation of: the agriculture system (Zunde Ramambo); health and education systems; traditional court system; spirituality and belief systems and spearheading of innovative income generating projects.
Covid-19 risk and response: Impacts and mitigations for modern slavery victims and survivors (24 Jul 2020 - 23 Nov 2021)
Project summary
As the UN explained, Covid-19 “is likely to increase the scourge of modern-day slavery.” Victims and survivors of modern slavery are at greater risk of ongoing exploitation and re-exploitation. Traffickers will increase recruitment and seek to maintain revenue during economic crisis. Victim identification has become even more challenging as States shift protection resources towards combatting the pandemic.
This project responds to many warnings by the policy community that, as the UN noted on May 5, “inaction could lead to a sharp rise in the number of people being pushed into slavery” because of Covid-19. The complexity of the risk environment may impede mitigation unless risks can be assessed in an efficient way. We therefore answer the question: what are the accrued risks and mitigating responses of Covid-19 for victims and survivors of modern slavery? To answer this key question, we answer the sub-questions: What are the causal pathways throughout which mitigations are expected to work? Do these efforts reflect survivors’ experiences?
Derived from disaster response techniques and public health frameworks, our participatory risk assessment includes interview, survey and web-monitoring data. Our multi-method design includes qualitative and quantitative surveys, public information monitoring, evidence reviews, and risk analysis. We adopt a multi-level approach to consider risk and assess against a framework adapted from our social determinants model. As we assess risk, we analyse responses and recommend mitigations.
Combating human trafficking: The role of NGOs in the fight against human trafficking in Zimbabwe (1 November 2019- 30 April 2021)
Zimbabwe is a source, transit and destination country for trafficking in persons, yet the prevalence of different forms of human trafficking in the country is unknown and the conviction rates and victim identification patterns remain a cause for concern. Also, Zimbabwe's current Trafficking in Persons law is inconsistent with international laws as it defines trafficking in persons as a movement based crime and does not adequately define 'exploitation'. This not only leaves many victims of trafficking without legal protection but has huge implications on how human trafficking is understood and anti-trafficking initiatives are undertaken.
This ESRC-GCRF funded project, aims to map the human trafficking activity in Zimbabwe through secondary analysis of NGO data and raise awareness of the trends, prevalence of different forms of human trafficking and the impact on gender and age. Through interdisciplinary and participatory research with one Zimbabwean university and 4 local and international NGOs involved with anti-human trafficking work in Zimbabwe, this project fills a major evidence gap about the role played by NGOs in the fight against human trafficking.
Internally displaced persons and Covid-19: Leveraging local low cost Covid-19 solutions in informal settlements in Zimbabwe (24 August 2020 – 14 February 2022)
This project focuses on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) residing in informal settlements in Harare, Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is a Southern African country which is among the latest countries in the African region to be affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Zimbabwe is currently experiencing daily spikes in Covid-19 cases, and is on a drive to put measures in place to combat the threat of rising numbers including public health education regarding practising hygiene, isolation, quarantine, social distancing and the wearing of protective clothing such as masks in public spaces. IDPs are however an economically disadvantaged and secluded population, with limited access to the critical public health information and resources to comply with the recommended Covid-19 hygiene standards in overcrowded conditions. Yet their precarious situation pauses a serious risk both to their population, and the mainstream population given the nature of the pandemic.
Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of two UK universities, three Zimbabwe universities and a local NGO, this 18-month impact-oriented project aims to complement the government’s current response to the pandemic by adapting locally developed low cost Covid-19 solutions to fit IDPs’ needs.
Disabled Refugee students Included and Visible in Education (DRIVE): Challenges and opportunities in three African countries (March 2020 - March 2022)
Refugees flee crisis situations, but then experience new crises in settlement contexts. This affects access to and success in, education. Refugee populations include disabled people who have been 'invisible' in policy and service provision. Girls are the most vulnerable in this group. Little is known about the challenges and opportunities disabled refugee students face to be included in education, especially in the Global South, which hosts most of the world's refugees.
This interdisciplinary project aims to understand the educational inclusion and exclusion of disabled refugee students, particularly girls, in South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe - countries with different approaches to settlement. Using quantitative and qualitative methods in a multiple case study, we will deliver evidence that will impact policy and practice, such that these students become visible and included in education. This will benefit individuals, families and societies and contribute to ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all.
Evidencing links between cognitive impairment and exploitation in England (5 September 2022 - 31 October 2024)
This two-year study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, investigated the connections between cognitive impairments, such as mental ill-health, learning disability or memory-loss, and vulnerabilities to exploitation, with a focus on England.
Through this research, we explored how these issues connect, including potential causative relationships. We also worked with, frontline professionals and people with lived-experience, as well as our partners, Ann Craft Trust and Human Trafficking Foundation, to understand how current responses might be improved to enable more effective prevention, intervention and support.
Outcomes from the project including the full project report, executive summary, easy-read summary, academic outputs and practice resources are available at our project website exploitationandci.org.uk. Through additional funding we are now starting to explore implications of this research in other parts of the UK.
Understanding the varied experiences of frailty in older age with respect to ethnicity: a mixed methods approach (31 October 2022 - 29 September 2024)
The ‘Frailty and Ethnicity’ research project brings together two concepts that are multifaceted lived experiences – the relationship between ethnicity and the experience of frailty in old age – in one of Britain’s most diverse cities (Leicester). Understanding how frailty is conceptualised in a diverse range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds is key to understanding health and illness in old age in these communities.
Focused on the lived experiences of older Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Indians, Caribbeans, and members of the African and White communities, the research aims to further understanding of frailty relative to ethnicity through analysing the collective lived experience. Context and circumstance are key to the lived experience of frailty, and this research aims to generate policy recommendations and practical tools designed to address the issue of persistent and enduring health inequality.
Thanks to ESRC funding, this interdisciplinary project brings together a team of researchers and partner organisations whose complementary expertise aims to capture aspects associated with experiences of health, illness, and frailty in old age that may be harder to articulate. The project team will be exploring a breadth of themes including specific contemporary ageing risks for groups, as well as those associated with place, social networks, employment, and access to skills/education across the life course and into old age, which will in turn be shaped by experiences of immigration, diaspora, racism, socio-economic inequality and generational culture change.
By exploring the differences in health outcomes and lived experience between and within groups, the research aims to disentangle the multiple overlapping layers of social, economic, and cultural factors that contribute to frailty as well as those that support wellbeing and resilience.
The ‘Frailty and Ethnicity’ research project is coordinated by the Universities of Liverpool, Leicester, Nottingham, and The Free University of Brussels, working closely with Age UK (Leicester, Shire and Rutland) and The Race Equality Centre, is funded by the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The £1.1 million project has been awarded funding of £792,000 from the ESRC. The research is in partnership with Age UK (Leicester, Shire and Rutland) and The Race Equality Centre.
Young migrants, chronic illness and disability: The case of African children and young people with sickle cell disease who migrate to England (1 January 2023 - 30 June 2025)
Migrant children and young people (CYP) often face intersecting contextual, structural, and individual challenges that create and reinforce disadvantages in accessing healthcare and achieving positive health and social outcomes. For those living with chronic illnesses, these challenges are intensified by complex transitions—health-related, developmental, educational, social, and geographical. Migration can disrupt familiar routines, systems of knowledge, and established identities, forcing young migrants with chronic conditions to navigate biographical uncertainty while reconstructing marginalised identities in unfamiliar environments. These transitions can profoundly affect their well-being, adjustment, and life trajectories.
To ensure appropriate and accessible services for migrant CYP with chronic illnesses, it is crucial to understand their lived experiences and support needs. This includes exploring how they manage their conditions in a new country, how they navigate unfamiliar healthcare systems, and what barriers and facilitators shape their access to care. Equally important is understanding care providers’ experiences, the support currently available, and the perspectives of CYP, families, and professionals on what effective, equitable support should look like.
This ESRC and Nottingham Research Fellowship-funded project addresses these knowledge gaps through a systematic scoping review and multi-method qualitative research. The project involves in-depth interviews with migrant CYP with sickle cell disease (SCD) in the UK, their parents or caregivers, and healthcare professionals and charities involved in their care. A photovoice component will also engage young participants in visually documenting their experiences. Together, these methods will generate conceptual insights into the post-migration healthcare experiences of CYP with chronic illnesses, laying the groundwork for future research, policy development, and practice improvement.
Homelessness and Out of Area Housing: Prevalence, impacts and mitigations of the practice (1 January 2023 - 31 January 2024)
Amidst a range of pressures within housing supply in the UK it is possible to recognise the impacts of a growing trend of unaffordability. The practice of placing households outside of their own area is growing with local authorities turning to both temporary accommodation and private rented sector housing away from their boundaries.
The Research England funded project aims to explore the prevalence of the practice in England, looking in detail at demographics who are disproportionately affected as well as geographical differences. It also intends to gain the perspective of those who have been placed out of area in order to understand the impacts that the practice can have on households as well as exploring possible mitigation.
The development of a policy brief, endorsed by industry stakeholders, has been completed and provides recommendations for central government departments, local authorities and other stakeholders to mitigate both the prevalence of out of area placements and the impacts on households.
Download the policy brief (PDF)
Hope, Legitimacy And Carceral Citizenship: Using Walking Methodologies To Understand Peoples’ Experience Of Probation Supervision (1 January 2023 - 31 May 2024)
This project has now been completed, and more details can be found about it in this journal article:
Probation, Technical Compliance and the ‘Drowning’ of Hope | The British Journal of Criminology | Oxford Academic
We also wrote a briefing for staff working with people on probation for His Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation, and which can be found here:
Hope and Probation: Using the lens of hope to reimagine probation practice – HM Inspectorate of Probation
Too Religious To Be Queer: LGBT Religious Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK (1 February 2023 - 31 January 2026)
This project originally set out to explore the tensions between religious identity and queer subjectivity among LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Challenging dominant secularist assumptions, it examined how faith and spirituality shape participants’ everyday lives, rather than accepting the common portrayal of LGBT religious claimants as passive “victims” in need of rescue. Early objectives included understanding the role of religious values in promoting queer liberation, and investigating how notions of “authentic” sexuality influence Home Office credibility assessments during asylum adjudication.
Since its inception, the study has evolved to follow participants’ lived needs and priorities. We now investigate how issues such as access to safe and stable accommodation, mental health support, employment prospects and opportunities for further study intersect with asylum experiences. Through participatory methods, including creative focus groups and in-depth interviews, the research uncovers how participants navigate these challenges, how community networks contribute to resilience, and where gaps in UK asylum policy continue to undermine wellbeing and integration.
Building on this UK-based work, I have incorporated a comparative element by developing the first-ever LGBTIQ+ asylum study in Japan. In collaboration with colleagues at the International Christian University in Tokyo and Kobe University, the project examines how LGBTIQ+ refugees and asylum seekers experience similar tensions in a different legal and cultural context. This cross-national perspective seeks to enrich our theoretical understanding of queer asylum experiences and generate practical insights to support this population in diverse asylum systems.
Re-entry and Desistance from crime in a Digital era: A cross-national comparative project (1 February 2023 - 30 January 2026)
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed numerous disparities and inequalities, including differences in access to justice, problems relating to prison-overcrowding, over-stretched criminal justice, welfare and healthcare systems, challenges to resilience, and highlighted the difficulties facing those individuals trying to cease offending. This project is addressing the fifth pillar of the UN Research Roadmap (Social cohesion and community resilience) and will directly touch three main research priorities namely: Which local solutions are most effective in addressing inequities and increasing community resilience (5.3.1)? What are the potential biases that may be introduced or reinforced by digital technologies during emergencies that amplify inequities and threaten social cohesion (5.5.2)?, and How can the unique needs of people who are in detention be considered in emergency response and recovery efforts (5.1.5)?
To do so, this project will explore how different criminal justice systems and community partners have been able to assist former-prisoners during the pandemic, where a wide-spread shift to the ‘remote delivery’ of personal services was initiated. The many challenges faced by former-prisoners must be addressed in order to assist them in the new ‘virtual world’. In order to build a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable society, we must understand why people stop offending, cope with challenging situations and how we can foster desistance. We need to know:
- How the new ‘digital-service-era’ affects processes of desistance/resilience
- hether there are disparities in the digital service era between countries with different welfare systems and how it affects desistance/resilience
- How different state-level organisations (criminal justice/welfare), levels of social capital, economic inequality and institutional arrangements affect desistance/resilience in a post pandemic world
- Which processes explain variations in rates of desistance/resilience
We have recruited 75 men and women from across Canada, England, Finland who were prisoners during the pandemic as well as 19 practitioners from these same countries whom assist them in their re-entry/desistance. Our qualitative comparative analysis and our interdisciplinary international collaboration will highlight how the digital-service-era varies in different countries and how it affects processes of desistance from crime and re-entry to support and inform decision-making.
The project is being written up as a book.
Nurturing Social Justice Network of Academics: A Reflexive Writing Training in South Asia for Members from Excluded Communities (1 March 2023 - 31 March 2025)
Exclusion is systematic and structural in hierarchical South Asian societies. The lack of training in academic writing and opportunities in publishing has confined academic entry and career advancement. The proposed project targets early-career researchers from excluded communities in Bangladesh and Nepal. It aims to:
- equip participants with skills of academic writing for publishing internationall
- establish and sustain an academic network for academic writers from different social science disciplines on the theme of social justice
- nurture future academic leadership in the South Asian region
Through the collaborative effort of a dedicated team of international scholars, the project successfully offered a reflexive training programme in 2024 for 20 regional participants. The programme entails:
- online mentoring for academic writing from a team of international scholars and journal editors
- a four-day workshop in Kathmandu, Nepal with reflexive training on academic writing, publishing and grant application
- continual support after the workshop for participants to submit their work to international journals for publication
The project's achievements include producing 10 research outputs for journal submission, developing a special issue proposal, forming the Asian Social Research Network and preparing four funding proposals for international research grants.
Designing justice: Participatory design with sex workers to build a sustainable local crime reporting and support system in Nottingham (1 March 2023 - 31 May 2024)
Funded under Research England’s Quality-related Participatory Research Fund, in this project Dr Larissa Sandy is co-producing a bespoke training package with academic and community partners to ensue sustainability for a crime reporting and support system that will be housed with the local sex worker organisation, POW Nottingham.
The project centres participatory knowledge production by working with POW, sex workers and experts in forensic psychology to collectively co-produce community-focused training materials in the form of a ‘Train the Trainer’ package not only to ensure sustainability but also provide crucial training and support for implementing a first disclosure reporting system at POW Nottingham.
Using community-based participatory methods the project uses co-design to achieve its aims of further supporting the development of a multi-purpose reporting system enabling reporting with local sex workers and POW, the police and sexual assault referral centres, empowering a heavily marginalised and stigmatised community and transforming ideas about justice.
Penal Evolution: Supervision in Comparative Context (1 May 2023 - 30 April 2026)
The scale, diversity and intensity of penal supervision (people subject to community sanctions and measures such as probation) has greatly increased in recent years, leading to suggestions that we have entered an era of ‘mass supervision’. Three times as many people are supervised in the community as are imprisoned, yet there have been few in-depth attempts to understand the nature of supervision and its growth. Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, this comparative research project explores supervision in situ across five nations: England, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The study will generate crucial knowledge about how supervision is experienced, practiced and governed, and the socio-political conditions that influence its forms and its development. The project team will employ diverse research methods - conducting qualitative interviews with practitioners, policy makers, and those experiencing supervision; as well as policy analysis, analysis of official statistics, and collecting experiential insights via digital ethnography.
The project team comprises of Professor Nicola Carr (University of Nottingham) and colleagues, Professor Beth Weaver and Dr Fern Gillon (University of Strathclyde); Dr Hannah Graham (University of Stirling); Dr Jake Phillips (Cambridge University); Professor Fergus McNeill (University of Glasgow) and Dr Sarah Doxat-Pratt (University of Nottingham). All members of the project team are involved in research fieldwork, knowledge exchange and dissemination at local, regional, and national levels throughout the study.
Project website.
Contemporary Long-Term Homicide Trends in England and Wales in the Period 1977-2019 and a Comparison with Non-Lethal Violence Trends (1 June 2023 - 31 May 2025)
Homicide is undoubtedly the most serious form of violence, resulting in substantial and widespread social, financial, and economic harm. Not only does it result in the physical loss of life, but also in problems for surviving families and friends, the neighbourhoods and communities where the crime was committed, and broader society. The most serious form of violence, homicide, declined in England and Wales between the early 2000s and 2014, after which the homicide rate rose again.
Much work remains to be done to the drivers of homicide trends; a significant challenge to societies globally, but especially so in England and Wales where research remains in its infancy.
This project aims to examine and to better understand the patterns in rising and falling homicide rates in England and
Wales over a period of four decades (1977-2019). We will do this by directing special attention to the following individual and aggregate level characteristics, including the:
- demographic characteristics of victims/offenders involved in homicides (eg age, sex, and social background)
- circumstantial characteristics of homicide incidents (eg location, weapon use, alcohol use)
- (aggregate-level) characteristics relating to lifestyle patterns/routine activities
- wider socio-economic conditions, cultural values
- role played by public perceptions and social attitudes in responding to homicide trends
In particular, we will (a) disaggregate and compare distinct homicide subtypes to scrutinize and better understand changes in homicide trends, using more comprehensive typologies based on offender-victim relationships and the
motives/circumstances of the homicide; and (b) compare lethal violence trends with trends in non-lethal violence by
dissecting violence subtypes to allow for a more accurate examination of changes in violent crimes, and to assess
similarities and differences in patterns of lethal and non-lethal violence in England and Wales.
Investigating the role these factors play in facilitating trends in homicide over time is critical for advancing our theoretical and empirical knowledge in this area, enabling guided policy efforts to further help reduce homicide and to potentially help mitigate further spikes.
To achieve the project's aims, we will draw on highly reliable, robust, large-scale datasets, including the Homicide Index (HI, 1977-2019), the British Crime Survey/Crime Survey for England and Wales (BCS/CSEW, 1981-2019), and the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA, 1983-2019). Data from the HI will allow for an extensive exploration of long-term patterns in homicide trends and will enable further refinement of disaggregating different subtypes of homicides; the two other sources will allow us to relate variables on lifestyle/routine activities at aggregate level, public perception/attitudes, and socioeconomic factors in a representative population sample. To analyse the data, multivariate trend analysis will be used to identify significant influencing factors driving changes in homicide trends. Lastly, one report will be produced, and four articles will be published in peer-reviewed international journals.
The project will be conducted by an interdisciplinary team of experienced researchers with:
- a background in criminology, sociology, social policy and economics.
- an interest in homicide, violence and crime in general; and in processes of change, both at the individual level, and the societal level.
- expertise in quantitative research methods, with particular experience in social statistics, and working with large-scale and sensitive datasets.
- a track record of undertaking a multitude of successful ESRC-projects using secondary data analyses to inform theory, practice, and policy. This will ensure that the project is performed successfully and efficiently with the highest quality standard.
The project webpage can be found here: Long-term trends in homicide and non-lethal violence in England and Wales 1977-2022.
Blood under the skin (1 December 2023 - 1 April 2024)
View details of the project.
To What Extent Do Work-Family Balance Policies Sustain Fertility Rates and Women’s Reproduction? Focused on the Cases Of the UK, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan (1 May 2024 - 30 April 2026)
This collaborative project is funded by the British Academy Small Grants (SRG2324\241671). It questions whether work-family balance policies can affect women’s reproductive intentions and sustain the fertility rate. Focusing on four distinct welfare systems (Italy, South Korea, Taiwan and the UK), it explores the stratified patterns of lower fertility rates and how and to what extent policy responses shape such patterns.
The study's primary methods are secondary data analysis, policy analysis, and in-depth interviews. The findings will be used to draw up policy recommendations for the four research sites and shed light on work-family balance policies in countries facing similar challenges in maintaining a sustainable fertility rate and its knock-on effects on society and the economy.
Desistance From Crime Amongst Black and Ethnic Minority Probationers (1 September 2024 - 28 February 2027)
Over the past 30 years, criminologists have sought to understand why people cease offending. Whilst these studies have produced numerous theories, and insights into why people desist from crime, there has been very little exploration of the ways in which people from minority ethnic groups cease offending. This is a serious oversight, since a) ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in the traffic of the criminal justice system, and b) due to structural racism, are less likely to be employed or form families of their own (both associated with desistance). This project will innovatively theorise processes of desistance for minority groups via a longitudinal examination of the processes by which people cease offending and an examination of the ways in which this maybe shaped by their ethnicity.
Our project will explore and contribute to each of the following research themes:
- How processes of desistance and the nature of transformative narratives vary by ethnicity
- The role of religion in desistance
- The role of local culture in shaping desistance processes
- The geography of desistance
- The role of probation supervision in desistance
Fieldwork is on-going and is taking place in one city in northern England.
Designing justice: Participatory design with sex workers to build a sustainable local crime reporting and support system in Nottingham (1 January 2025 - 30 June 2025)
Safety is a significant issue for sex workers, and in this project, Dr Larissa Sandy was awarded a British Academy Innovation Fellowship to develop a local crime reporting and support system for sex workers in Nottingham. The project was a collaboration between the University of Nottingham and POW Nottingham, a local sex worker support organisation, that used co-design methods to produce a sex worker centred, trauma-informed first disclosure reporting system to bridge relationships between sex workers, the police and other frontline service providers.
The reporting system developed as part of this innovative and unique participatory research project with sex workers in Nottingham was launched at the National Justice Museum and included an interactive art exhibition created by sex workers to shed light on their experiences of accessing justice in Nottingham. The artwork was featured in a co-authored ‘zine’ reporting project results to the local sex work community.
COSWJ zine.
In addition to developing a local crime reporting and support system, the project documented adaptions to police liaison program models being trialled at POW Nottingham, where we ‘flipped the model’, with the police liaison officer based in a sex worker support organisation and responsible to the sex work community, rather than traditional models where liaison officers are part of the police family.
Project highlights include a policy brief published by the Institute for Policy and Engagement reporting results from interviews with sex workers and POW clients on this program innovation.
PLO policy brief
Co-defining Social Policy and Social Policy Education - our discipline our say (31 January 2025 - 31 December 2026)
Commissioned by the Social Policy Association (SPA), this research project builds on the recommendations outlined in The Current and Future State of Social Policy Teaching in UK Higher Education to capture the most up-to-date perspectives on the purposes, core elements, opportunities and challenges of social policy within higher education. To achieve this, we engage social policy academics from diverse professional and personal backgrounds.
The findings will be crucial in informing the SPA about the concerns and aspirations of the social policy community, as well as the needs of its members and the wider community in supporting social policy teaching and learning activities in higher education. More broadly, the findings will contribute to the upcoming consultation on the revised QAA subject benchmark statement for social policy and help enhance public understanding of social policy.
Deathbed marriage: are older terminally ill people in the East Midlands safeguarded from predatory or forced marriage and civil partnership? (1 February 2025 - 31 July 2025)
This project focuses on how terminally-ill people are safeguarded in the event of deathbed marriage – marriages authorised by the Registrar General by means of a specific Register General’s licence. For many, getting married at the end of life is a positive, life affirming event. However, people at end of life are extremely vulnerable and may be at risk of forced or predatory marriage from people seeking to inherit their property and wealth or gain control of other decisions such as funeral arrangements. Evidence suggests that there may be significant gaps in knowledge about the safeguarding implications of deathbed marriage, across health, social care, the legal profession and marriage registrars.
The project builds on Clawson & Fyson’s previous work on forced marriage of people with learning disabilities and Clawson’s more recent work on family narratives of predatory marriages of people with age-related cognitive decline. Clawson’s work on predatory marriage has already shown that deathbed marriage can significantly impact upon the wishes of the dying person not being followed upon death, for example in terms of where they are buried and who inherits their estate. There can also be a significant impact on surviving family members including loss of inheritance, exclusion from funerals and lack of access to sentimental possessions, for example photographs.
Working with an expert Advisory Board made up of key stakeholder groups, this project seeks to develop a better understanding of the issue from a range of perspectives. It explores: the impact on surviving family members; understanding of staff in hospices/community settings and marriage registrars on capacity to consent; and the legal, financial and general consequences of deathbed marriage. Planned activities with key policymakers will inform safeguarding policy and practice relating to marriage and adult safeguarding.
The Digitalisation of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare: Black Women’s Inclusion and Exclusion in Prevention, Services and Care (Midlands and London) (1 June 2025 - 31 May 2026)
Health inequalities amongst Black African and Black Caribbean communities in the UK are stark. Black people experience some of the worst healthcare outcomes in the UK, with a burden of inequalities wrapped in notions of racialised discrimination and historical prejudice. Black people also have poor healthcare outcomes when targeting sexual and reproductive healthcare across the board. Moreover, the transitional increase into digital approaches to healthcare delivery and services has witnessed a damming response by marginalised communities to be further excluded from assessing and engaging in this systematic change.
Dr Shardia Briscoe-Palmer leads a research team, funded by NIHR, made of community organisers, academic, community and clinician researchers, and community members, who have been involved in shaping knowledge and practice about HIV, sexual health and women’s health for many years. The project aims to contribute to existing evidence on digital inequalities and data poverty amongst Black women from different communities, through addressing sexual and reproductive health inequalities.
The project will conduct a mixed-method mapping and scoping exercise on the inclusion and exclusion experiences of Black women’s sexual and reproductive healthcare as a direct result of the transformation into digital approaches to prevention, services and care in the UK through community involvement. The team will engage and develop the co-production work needed to begin to map digital health inclusion/exclusion in sexual and reproductive healthcare for Black women and mitigate the potential for unequal outcomes from a transition to digital healthcare.