Originally published in 1967, Social Policy and the Young Delinquent is an account of a process: of the way in which the treatment of the child delinquent has developed from the days when a boy of nine could be sentenced to be hanged for stealing two penny worth of paint (though the sentence, imposed in 1833, was not actually carried out) to the controversies of the time concerning the desirability of replacing the legalistic and penal framework of the services for young offenders by a service more appropriate to their educational and social needs.
Peter Boss deals with the development of policy relating to the young offender with sympathy and clarity. While his own views were progressive, he is at pains to point out the administrative advantages and disadvantages of each of the current proposals, and to leave the reader free to make up their own mind on issues which have no simple and easy solution. Profound changes had taken place in our attitude to delinquent children over the previous hundred years, and, as Boss makes clear, the importance and even the direction of change was not always clearly discernible at the time. Whatever the outcome of the controversy in 1967, this account of a developing process would have been of value in enabling us to stand back and take the long view of the most intractable and important problems of modern urban society.