The pair of "Juvenile Liaison" films say much about a style of documentary films which purport to show uncomfortable truths, but in fact show only the story the film makers want to tell.
Broomfield's film is set in my home town, one of the most deprived in the UK. The older kids are from my school, which I attended when this was shot 44 years ago.
In the first film Broomfield portrays the response of the police to petty juvenile crime as being cruel and out of proportion. The second film suggests that the first was "banned", although by whom isn't made clear. These seem to be very selective truths, and what's left out seems to be more important than what's left in.
In one scene we see a policeman pulling "George" out of bed by the hair; at another he scares a young child accused of stealing a toy. Horrific, to Broomfield and his intended audience at least.
And yet at school we didn't fear the police, we feared our fellow pupils. Kids who truanted and stole were also violent. If they took your stuff, it was done violently. I didn't see any cowboy suits being stolen, but I did witness attempted rape of a teacher and many serious physical assaults with a range of weapons.
If you look closely, George is dragged out of bed having just given his aunty concussion and a trip to A&E with a broken wrist. The cowboy suit was stolen with menaces. At that time the school maintained a "punishment book", recording the beatings given to children by teachers with a variety of weapons, often in public. Any child referred to the police would already feature heavily in that book. The film didn't show these beatings by teachers, although they would be significantly more horrific than anything Brookfield does show us.
In another sequence a child's parent makes repeated threats of violence to his child. This parental violence isn't shown or otherwise addressed.
Contrary to the impression given by the film, these children weren't managed by the police in isolation. Broomfield made the choice to focus solely on the police involvement to the generally high level of violence whilst ignoring the much more significant violence these children would have suffered from their peers; their parents; and their teachers.
Broomfield claimed the first film was "still banned" as late as 2015, despite the film being easily available for decades as he must have been aware.
In fact the subjects portrayed in the first film withdrew their consent, so the producers decided not to release it. In the second film Broomfield attempts to get selected subjects to blame their withdrawal of consent on the police, but the contrast between privately educated Broomfield and those he tries to coach on camera is striking.
An honest film addressing the issues of violence in my school could have been useful and informative. Instead these films tell us much about the politics of the film maker and little of the real world.
I too would have withdrawn consent .