The genesis of the social 2 The child in danger 3 The dangerous child 4 The child-savers: the terrain of contestation 5 Child-saving institutions 6 Sexuality and the gendered delinquent 7 Conclusion: policing gender, class and family Appendix A Admission statisticsIn May 1992, following a request that I had placed in a local Scottish newspaper for information about reformatories and industrial schools, I received a letter from a "78 year old person", who chose to comment on the documentary about girls' homes that I had worked on with BBC Scotland some months earlier.The letter warned: "If you are going to write stories and make films, try and get your facts right first.Your film…was disgusting, all lies… [It] did not upset people who know the facts… Try and do something useful with your talent."My first piece of "hate mail" disturbed me for a number of fairly obvious reasons.What it confirmed, though, was that there continues to be a wide range of emotions and contested interpretations surrounding these particular institutions of the social.I would like to begin, therefore, by expressing my sincere gratitude to the women and men who graciously permitted me to interview them for this book.