This is not quite the book I anticipated. Hot on the heels of other general critiques of child imprisonment, I expected it to tread similar ground. Moreover, Goldson has something of a reputation for firing broad fusillades at the contemporary youth justice system, sometimes (allegedly) with too little acknowledgement of the counter-arguments.
But this book is both technically instructive and analytically incisive.
It focuses specifically on two groups of vulnerable young people: those considered to be "endangered" and committed to local authority secure accommodation, and those considered to be sufficiently "dangerous", before conviction, to merit prison containment.
Goldson maintains that such a distinction is specious. His analysis builds from the aspiration in the 1991 Criminal Justice Act to remove all young people under the age of 17 from prison, thereby also abolishing even the possibility of penal remands. Instead, the reverse has taken place, and there has been a steady increase in the use of secure accommodation and penal remands.
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