Just a very brief plug for a public event that I’m speaking at with a colleague, Caroline Lanskey, on Thursday 31st. We’ll be talking about historical research we did last year on historic abuses in youth prisons, which took place during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s but went unrecognised by those responsible for preventing them, leaving them only to come to official attention much more recently. There are important and live questions around these events, in particular relating to whether money spent investigating historic abuses is well spent.

We’ll be talking about our archival research we did on past safeguarding regimes, and presenting our findings about why they failed to recognise the abuse that was taking place in youth custody, often in plain sight. We’ll also discuss what this kind of historical research might have to say about more recent abuse scandals in the youth prisons of today.

Further details are here; it’s free!