A good film this, sort of a cross between a episode of panorama and a episode of the sweeney.
It follows members of blackburns juevenille liason team as they scour the streets looking for schoolchildren who are truanting from school.
We see a woman do this job and she comes across as sort of a prim and proper schoolmistress, 1 of the best lines she has is when she is cross examining a young girl and delivers this line "your a slut, people will call you a slut, do you want to be a slut".
The real star of this piece though is sergant ray, he pulls no punches and comes across as sort of a northern version of the terminator in his never endign quest to get kids back to school/give them a bollocking for mouthing off at their parents/ give them a walloping for doing any of the first 2 things.
Basically his job was to scare young kids so they didnt keep offending and getting in trouble ending up in jail and his methods and a tad excessive to say the least.
We see him kicking a bedroom door down and dragging a 15 year old boy out of bed to the calls of "yes and when he is done with you your going to get one from me as well" from his dad, its strange how he sort of terrorises these 12 to 15 year old kids but the worst thing for me was when he talked to this 8 year old kid in a police cell who stole a cowboy outfit, the dialogue went like this "do you like this place" "you know if you dont behave you will end up here" "they turn the lights out here at night" "it is a scary place at night" "bad things happen here at night" a few minutes later he takes the terrified young boys hand and leads him away, perhaps a moment where he let his guard down.
The film is mesmorizing for a number of reasons, it is just so brutal and real you can hardly believe he is doing this stuff to young kids but on the other hand you cant help but wonder if it was a better time when there was a bit more disipline for young kids.
A great watch if you can find it, its not a easy film to find at all and has been banned several times but they sometimes put the full film on youtube, i think that adds to the mystery of the film.
Review of Juvenile Liaison
