Juvenile Liaison

A devastating exposé of the now notorious police scheme to cope with potential young (from 7 years old) offenders. The film is a deliberately modest effort (it follows the work of one Lancashire juvenile liaison division over a seven-week period, is shot in available light, and made without TV-style window-dressing), yet it is hard to think of another British film that has so succinctly revealed the day-to-day mechanics whereby class and paternalistic authority are sustained. The collusion of the educational establishments is perhaps the hardest thing of all to take.