Women involved in the criminal justice system experience disproportionately high levels of trauma, with risk profiles distinct from those observed in men. This study examined the prevalence of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (cPTSD) and risk factors extending beyond discrete “index” traumas among CJ-involved women. 91 women (mean age = 36, SD = 11) accessing women’s centers in England following prison release or probation referral were assessed with the International Trauma Questionnaire and the Women’s Risk Needs Assessment. Non-Negative Elastic Net Regression identified predictors of cPTSD. 83%met diagnostic criteria for cPTSD, with a further 10% meeting criteria for PTSD. Strongest predictors included homelessness, childhood abuse, residential care and child removal. Findings indicate trauma exposure is characterized by cumulative adversity and prolonged unsafe conditions rather than isolated events. Current diagnostic frameworks may inadequately capture these experiences, underscoring the need for trauma-informed approaches that recognize structural harm and exclusion from statutory support.

It is widely acknowledged that place matters for health. Previous research has explored the ways in which the material and physical dimensions of place may shape the health-related behaviours of individuals. However, to date there has been much less focus on the importance of individuals’ ‘sense of place’ – the subjective and experiential aspects of place – in shaping health-related behaviours. This paper offers new insights into the importance of individuals’ sense of place in shaping attitudes towards, and consumption of, nicotine and tobacco products. Our qualitative study involved 42 interviews with residents and those working in a superdiverse UK neighbourhood, Handsworth, Birmingham. The study identified that attitudes towards, and consumption of, nicotine and tobacco products were variegated, and informed by issues such as neighbourhood identity and diversity, local infrastructures of nicotine and tobacco provision, the normalisation and regulation of nicotine and tobacco products and the extent to which place-based communities and social solidarity were evident or absent. Subsequently, the implications for place-based approaches to health are considered.

ABSTRACT Caseworkers in women's centres in the United Kingdom provide support to justice‐involved women. They do so amidst an unpredictable funding landscape shaped by austerity, resulting in underfunded and overstretched public services. As part of the penal voluntary sector, women's centres have stepped forward, providing frontline support to women with unmet needs, including those in crisis and with significant histories of trauma. Despite their vital role, little research has explored what it means to be a women's centre caseworker, and their emotional experiences remain largely unknown. This article addresses this gap by drawing on qualitative research conducted with caseworkers and managers in women's centres in England between September 2023 and February 2024. The findings examine the interrelated drivers of vicarious harm that shape caseworkers' experiences, illuminating the hidden costs involved in providing one‐to‐one support.

The emergence of city regions reflects ongoing processes of restructuring and rescaling of nation states vis a vis attempts to secure economic growth and global competitiveness. Such spaces are often structurally and spatially privileged by the state and territorially 'deprivilege' spaces which lie outside city regions, including the 'In-between spaces of city regionalism' (ISCR). Through a focus on one example of an ISCR located in the United Kingdom - Warrington - and which sits between the Greater Manchester and Liverpool city regions - the paper provides important new insights on how ISCR actors perceive territorial and relational deprivileging in practice, and how they have overcome such challenges. This includes new territorial fixes and practices of scalecraft to create 'organizational thickness' for increasing their voice and influence, and to secure investment.

Women’s Centres in the UK provide crucial support to women with complex needs, who are often excluded from statutory services, frequently acting as a service of ‘last resort’. A major challenge when working with this population is the lack of a holistic, validated, and gender-responsive assessment tool to measure needs comprehensively and systematically. This paper introduces the Gendered Well-being Assessment (GWA), a trauma-informed quality-of-life assessment designed for women with complex needs outside the criminal justice system. The GWA aims to support early intervention, enhance multi-agency collaboration, whilst offering a structured framework for case management. A comprehensive scoring algorithm combines contemporary research on accumulative complex trauma, complex needs, and toxic stress physiology with an overall aim to highlight unmet needs to avoid preventable harm and improve overall quality of life. The assessment takes account of the interconnectedness of needs, and across 5 key domains, and 12 sections create a comprehensive overview of the breadth and depth of needs. Unlike fragmented assessments, the GWA integrates multiple validated tools into a single framework, ensuring credibility within multi-agency partnerships. By recognising protective factors like self-efficacy and social support, the GWA moves beyond harm mitigation to promote resilience and flourishing. Its structured, algorithm-based approach informs personalised support plans, transforming service provision and policy. This innovative tool ensures that women’s needs are addressed comprehensively and equitably within a broader social context.

Academic understanding of women's gendered pathways into the criminal justice system has grown significantly over the last 20 years. Allied to this development has been an increasing number of gender-responsive practices and interventions designed to address the needs of criminal justice-involved women. This meta-analysis summarizes the trends in 71 interventions extracted from 64 papers involving justice-involved women. Subgroup analysis and meta-regression were used, which shows that gender-responsive interventions are up to 42% more effective compared with gender-neutral, even when controlling for several covariates. Other findings in our case demonstrate features of interventions, such as intervention, format, focus, and length, that appear to be effective in reducing recidivism for criminal justice-involved women. Our findings strengthen the case for investment in gender-responsive interventions and diversion programs.

Over the last twenty years considerable attention has focused on the territorial restructuring and rescaling of the state. In particular, there has been an emphasis on city-regionalism to enhance the capacity of formal and more informal structures of governance to secure greater spatial equity and economic competitiveness. However, the spaces which sit outside of these spaces – the ‘In-between Spaces of City-Regionalism’ (ISCR) – have received relatively little attention. This paper addresses this gap in knowledge by focusing on the Northwest of England (UK) and an in-between space flanked by the Manchester and Liverpool city-regions. It highlights that despite the significant privileging of city-regions and their respective governance structures by the state, actors of relevance to ISCR spaces have also worked in highly entrepreneurial ways - both territorially and relationally - to embed economic development activities conducive to economic growth. Consequently, we offer important insights into the methods key actors in ISCR spaces can use to bypass presumed (and widely ineffective) assumptions of economic trickle down fuelled by city-regional agglomerative policy.

Little attention has been focused on how the differing features of ‘superdiverse’ neighbourhoods shape the demographic process of ‘staying’. Through drawing on research conducted in two different superdiverse neighbourhoods in the city of Birmingham, UK, the paper highlights how ‘staying’ is an inherent feature of superdiverse neighbourhoods and which is actively practised by migrants and non-migrants alike. Empirically, the paper identifies how staying is informed by a number of features associated with superdiverse neighbourhoods, such as local infrastructure and visible population diversity, as well as relational proximity to other areas (of the city), including the significance of city centre spaces and their role as multicultural spaces of adaptation. Conceptually, the paper informs recent work on ‘arrival infrastructures’ and ‘differentiated embedding’ for migrant (and non-migrant) settlement and provides new insights into the territorial, relational and temporal aspects of staying. This includes the importance of neighbourhood histories in staying processes, and which hitherto have been relatively neglected.

Whilst the process of gentrification in rural spaces is widely recognised, there has been less focus to date on the emergence of rural super-gentrification - defined as the displacement of the wealthy from rural communities by the super-wealthy. Of the limited work which has been conducted on super-gentrification, this has focused on the nature and outcomes of displacement taking place in different rural settings without considering the actions of key agents, such as planners and estate agents. Consequently, this paper explores the role of gentrifying agents - namely planners and estate agents - in shaping processes of rural super-gentrification in the English countryside. The paper highlights how restrictive planning regimes, including constraints on higher plot densities, contribute to ‘rural exclusivity’ and rural super-gentrification. Within such contexts, the promotional and steering strategies of estate agents - based upon incomers perceived economic and cultural capital - also facilitate rural super-gentrification. In such a way, the paper advances existing consumption-side theories of gentrification by highlighting desires by super-wealthy incomers for consuming rural village locations with local services, a slower pace of life and a ‘sense of community’. In addition, the importance of privacy and seclusion, urban proximity and connectivity and access to educational circuits by incomers also shape the promotional and steering strategies of estate agents. Consequently, the paper highlights how more localised ‘micro-geographies’ of rural super-gentrification are of relevance to rural areas in comparison to urban contexts, where super-gentrification is argued to be a neighbourhood-level phenomenon.

Abstract Previous research exploring the relationship between diversity and urban planning has overwhelmingly focused on the multicultural city. In contrast, there has been much less focus to date on the challenges of increasing superdiversity for urban planning. The chapter initially highlights how superdiversity is leading to changes in the spatial distribution of migrants in the city and away from traditional thinking that there are just one or two large-scale concentrations of ethnic groups in urban areas. In fact, individuals with varying characteristics can be spread across the city, and more people from diverse backgrounds are living in the same areas than ever before as a consequence of all sorts of unpredictable migration flows. Such complexity presents increasing challenges for urban planners. The chapter evaluates key areas of research, focusing on the relationship between urban planning and issues of diversity. In turn, it sets out a number of themes that warrant further attention with respect to urban planning responses to increasing superdiversity, which extend beyond existing analyses. This includes a focus on the importance of settlement structures, strategies of spatial distribution for new migrant arrivals and social mixing, and the need to coproduce new urban planning strategies with local residents.