Recent Book: Welfare, Power & Juvenile Justice
| Published date | 01 October 1987 |
| Date | 01 October 1987 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X8706000414 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
RECENT BOOKS
TOM
ROBERTS: Friends and Villains.
London:
Hodder
&Stoughton. £9.95.
Tom Roberts writes as he doubtless speaks, precisely and factually, with an uderlying
layer of sincerity to add conviction.
For
policemen, whether serving or retired, his account of 26 years' service with
the Surrey Constabulary will make interesting reading, especially when he indulges
in anecdotal nostaligia; indeed, more "I had a case" examples would have been
welcomed. Older readers wishing to take a trip down Memory Lane to the "good old
days of yore" will not be disappointed, although atendency to eulogise over certain
aspects of his police career, including personalities encountered, probably at the
expense of
other
more interesting material, is to be regretted.
The 28 years which he spent as an adviser on security matters within the
machinery of government, and later in commercial and industrial security, receive
scant attention, as one would expect. This book will not provoke court action by an
angry Prime Minister, nor will Tom Roberts seek Antipodean shelter. Its value rests
purely and simply on an account of developments in policing between the two world
wars, as seen through the eyes of a provincial Detective Superintendent. J.B.S.
ROBERT
HARRIS and DAVID WEBB: Welfare, Power &Juvenile Justice.
London: Tavistock Publications Ltd. £8.95.
In this analysis of the social control of delinquent youth, the authors review the
development, purpose and practice of juvenile justice, predominantly at a conceptual
level. A relatively brief historical exegesis, covering, respectively, the developments
of juvenile justice and welfare, leads into the main body of the study wherein "the
process and purpose of supervision are analyzed at macro, mezzo and micro levels,
each of them characterized by an intersection of the judicial and the administrative".
Ashort chapter dealing with the supervision of girls procedes the concluding
chapter, which looks towards the future in both summation and ruminating
hypothesis. Liberally spread with appropriate quotes from a plethora of studies, the
work without question is one of scholarship and whilst the authors offer no panacea
to the problems highlighted, they hope their efforts will alert readers to certain
dangers, paradoxes and arrogances which repeatedly surface in the study of juvenile
justice. As they so eloquently put it, "if it is human wickedness which we seek to
control, the scope for
our
attempts to do so is rather greater than the likelihood of
our
ultimate success".
Of the book as a whole, however, it must be said that its esoteric nature and
heavily jargonized style make it strictly one for the devotee. This is to be regretted,
for a less formalized approach, without the many bewildering convolutions, would
have added greatly to its value and enhanced its appeal to a wider readership. M.L.S.
MICHAEL DE-LA-NOY: Acting As Friends - The Story of the Samaritans.
London: Constable Publications. £10.95.
This book is the result of the author's "independent" study of The Samaritans,
during which he was given unrestricted access to Samaritan Centres throughout the
country and talked intimately with many people who called upon the voluntary
agency for help.
Michael De-la-Noy examines the way in which volunteers are recruited and
trained to be of service and looks closely at the agency's strict code of confidentiality,
often abone of contention with others who serve the community and parents. He
deals fairly and squarely with controversial issues and is careful to point out that the
book can only be read as one person's objective view of a national organization
which bases its aims and modes of operation on a standard code of conduct and then
355 October 1987
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