Out of Care 30 years on

Abstract

The article recalls the writing of Out of Care, often regarded as a key text for juvenile justice policy and practice in England and Wales in the 1980s. It dispels some misconceptions about the book’s arguments, showing that it argued for a ‘welfare’ rather than a ‘justice’ approach to juvenile offending, and offered a set of prescriptions for face-to-face practice as well as for a critical understanding of the local juvenile justice system. The article acknowledges some contradictions and ambiguities in Out of Care, but shows that it is a mistake to treat it as advocating minimum (as opposed to targeted) intervention, or as arguing that the content of direct work with young people is unimportant. The article traces some of the processes by which the ideas in the book were made available to audiences of practitioners and policy-makers, and how changes in policy in particular local authorities encouraged a wider process of reform.