Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

All Outputs (26)

Taking Back Control: Human Rights and Human Trafficking in the United Kingdom (2024)
Journal Article
Landman, T., Brewster, B., & Thornton, S. (2024). Taking Back Control: Human Rights and Human Trafficking in the United Kingdom. Societies, 14(4), Article 47. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc14040047

Modern slavery and human trafficking are well recognized as significant problems in need of legislation, policies, and actions from a wide range of stakeholders in the United Kingdom. The passage of the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 is a hallmark of the... Read More about Taking Back Control: Human Rights and Human Trafficking in the United Kingdom.

Galvanizing Local Anti-Trafficking Partnership Work Using Intelligence: Profiling the Problem and Building Resilience (2023)
Journal Article
Rinaldi-Semione, J., & Brewster, B. (2023). Galvanizing Local Anti-Trafficking Partnership Work Using Intelligence: Profiling the Problem and Building Resilience. Societies, 13(3), Article 61. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13030061

Prior research has evidenced the importance of collaboration and multi-agency partnership work in responding to human trafficking in both the UK and US. Three previous key studies are synthesized in this paper. We situate multi-agency anti-traffickin... Read More about Galvanizing Local Anti-Trafficking Partnership Work Using Intelligence: Profiling the Problem and Building Resilience.

Covid-19, Vulnerability and the Safeguarding of Criminally Exploited Children (2022)
Report
Robinson, G., Brewster, B., Brotherton, V., Silverman, B., & Walsh, D. (2022). Covid-19, Vulnerability and the Safeguarding of Criminally Exploited Children. Economic and Social Research Council

This is the third briefing from research investigating the impacts of Covid-19 on child criminal exploitation and County Lines. Findings indicate that restrictions introduced in response to the pandemic have hindered the ability of youth workers to s... Read More about Covid-19, Vulnerability and the Safeguarding of Criminally Exploited Children.

Policing County Lines: Impact of Covid-19 (2022)
Report
Brewster, B., Robinson, G., Brotherton, V., Silverman, B., & Walsh, D. (2022). Policing County Lines: Impact of Covid-19. Economics and Social Research Council

The second briefing from ongoing research indicates that restrictions introduced in response to Covid-19 have forced adaptations in the methods used by County Lines drug supply networks and have impacted upon the ways law enforcement work to detect a... Read More about Policing County Lines: Impact of Covid-19.

Covid-19 and child criminal exploitation in the UK: implications of the pandemic for county lines (2021)
Journal Article
Brewster, B., Robinson, G., Silverman, B. W., & Wash, D. (2023). Covid-19 and child criminal exploitation in the UK: implications of the pandemic for county lines. Trends in Organized Crime, 26, 156-179. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-021-09442-x

In March 2020, the UK was placed in lockdown following the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Just as legitimate workplaces made changes to enable their employees to work from home, the illicit drugs trade also made alternative arrangements, adapting its... Read More about Covid-19 and child criminal exploitation in the UK: implications of the pandemic for county lines.

Building Slavery-free Communities: A Resilience Framework (2020)
Journal Article
Gardner, A., Northall, P., & Brewster, B. (2020). Building Slavery-free Communities: A Resilience Framework. Journal of Human Trafficking, 7(3), 338-353. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322705.2020.1777828

There is growing interest in the use of community-based approaches to address the causes of modern slavery and the related goal of building anti-slavery 'resilience'. However, the concept of resilience is often poorly understood and applied without a... Read More about Building Slavery-free Communities: A Resilience Framework.

Building a Bedrock of Trust Between Citizens, Law Enforcement and Other Stakeholders: A Scalable Architecture for Community Policing (2019)
Book Chapter
Marzell, L., & Brewster, B. (2019). Building a Bedrock of Trust Between Citizens, Law Enforcement and Other Stakeholders: A Scalable Architecture for Community Policing. In B. Akhgar, P. S. Bayerl, & G. Leventakis (Eds.), Social Media Strategy in Policing: From Cultural Intelligence to Community Policing (139-158). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22002-0_8

In today’s complex and interconnected world, the diverse communities that exist within it are complex ecosystems; no longer defined by geography alone. Instead, a multitude of factors, interests and connections, both virtual and physical, bind us tog... Read More about Building a Bedrock of Trust Between Citizens, Law Enforcement and Other Stakeholders: A Scalable Architecture for Community Policing.

Collaborating to identify, recover and support victims of modern slavery (2018)
Journal Article
Brewster, B. (2018). Collaborating to identify, recover and support victims of modern slavery. Journal of Modern Slavery, 4(2), 200-224

This article presents findings from a series of case studies into the impact of multiagency anti-slavery partnerships in the UK. The research draws upon empirical evidence from a number of geographic regions as the basis of a comparative analysis inv... Read More about Collaborating to identify, recover and support victims of modern slavery.

Policing the Community Together: The Impact of Technology on Citizen Engagement (2018)
Book Chapter
Brewster, B., Gibson, H., & Gunning, M. (2018). Policing the Community Together: The Impact of Technology on Citizen Engagement. In G. Leventakis, & M. Haberfeld (Eds.), Societal Implications of Community-Oriented Policing and Technology (91-102). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89297-9_11

Despite broad and often varied underlying definitions, a common theme throughout community and neighbourhood policing strategies establishes the need to target improvements in the relationship and level of engagement between the police and the commun... Read More about Policing the Community Together: The Impact of Technology on Citizen Engagement.

Combatting Cybercrime and Sexual Exploitation of Children: An Open Source Toolkit (2017)
Book Chapter
Papalexandratos, G., Charalambous, E., Koutras, N., Kavallieros, D., Leventakis, G., & Brewster, B. (2017). Combatting Cybercrime and Sexual Exploitation of Children: An Open Source Toolkit. In Open Source Intelligence Investigation: From Strategy to Implementation (233-249). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47671-1_15

This chapter presents the UINFC2 “Engaging Users in preventing and fighting Cybercrime” software platform, showcasing how software tools designed to detect, collect, analyse, categorise and correlate information that is publically available online, c... Read More about Combatting Cybercrime and Sexual Exploitation of Children: An Open Source Toolkit.

Organised Crime and Social Media: Detecting and Corroborating Weak Signals of Human Trafficking Online (2016)
Conference Proceeding
Andrews, S., Brewster, B., & Day, T. (2016). Organised Crime and Social Media: Detecting and Corroborating Weak Signals of Human Trafficking Online. In Graph-Based Representation and Reasoning: 22nd International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2016, Annecy, France, July 5-7, 2016, Proceedings (137-150). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40985-6_11

This paper describes an approach for detecting the presence or emergence of Organised Crime (OC) signals on Social Media. It shows how words and phrases, used by members of the public in Social Media, can be treated as weak signals of OC, enabling in... Read More about Organised Crime and Social Media: Detecting and Corroborating Weak Signals of Human Trafficking Online.

Consolidated Taxonomy and Research Roadmap for Cybercrime and Cyberterrorism (2016)
Book Chapter
Akhgar, B., Choraś, M., Brewster, B., Bosco, F., Vermeersch, E., Luda, V., …Wells, D. (2016). Consolidated Taxonomy and Research Roadmap for Cybercrime and Cyberterrorism. In B. Akhgar, & B. Brewster (Eds.), Combatting Cybercrime and Cyberterrorism: Challenges, Trends and Priorities (295-321). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38930-1_16

In this concluding chapter, we consolidate the broad spectrum of challenges discussed throughout this book towards the formulation of a number key priority topics to be addressed by future research related to cybercrime and cyberterrorism. During thi... Read More about Consolidated Taxonomy and Research Roadmap for Cybercrime and Cyberterrorism.

Challenges Priorities and Policies: Mapping the Research Requirements of Cybercrime and Cyberterrorism Stakeholders (2016)
Book Chapter
Akhgar, B., Wells, D., & Brewster, B. (2016). Challenges Priorities and Policies: Mapping the Research Requirements of Cybercrime and Cyberterrorism Stakeholders. In Combatting Cybercrime and Cyberterrorism: Challenges, Trends and Priorities (39-51). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38930-1_3

The following chapter provides an in depth look at a broad selection challenges related to Cybercrime and Cyberterrorism, as identified through prolonged engagement with a multitude of horizontal and vertical cyber-security stakeholders. Out of six c... Read More about Challenges Priorities and Policies: Mapping the Research Requirements of Cybercrime and Cyberterrorism Stakeholders.

Cybercrime: Attack Motivations and Implications for Big Data and National Security (2015)
Book Chapter
Brewster, B., Kemp, B., Galehbakhtiari, S., & Akhgar, B. (2015). Cybercrime: Attack Motivations and Implications for Big Data and National Security. In Application of Big Data for National Security: A Practitioner's Guide to Emerging Technologies (108-127). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-801967-2.00008-2

Organizations are increasingly turning to the immeasurable quantities of data available through open-source mediums such as the web and social media to enhance their analytical capability and ultimately improve the quality and quantity of the informa... Read More about Cybercrime: Attack Motivations and Implications for Big Data and National Security.

Crawling Open-Source Data for Indicators of Human Trafficking (2014)
Conference Proceeding
Brewster, B., Ingle, T., & Rankin, G. (2014). Crawling Open-Source Data for Indicators of Human Trafficking. In 2014 IEEE/ACM 7th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing. https://doi.org/10.1109/ucc.2014.116

Information available from open-source mediums such as the web and social media are increasingly being used to aid the response to emergent crimes and reinforce existing Law Enforcement Agency intelligence capability. In this paper we discuss the rat... Read More about Crawling Open-Source Data for Indicators of Human Trafficking.