The Baby Peter and Dano Sonnex incidents were high profile cases in which two key public services, namely child protection and probation, both failed in their tasks of protection of the victims and the public. In this book the author graphically describes media and political reactions and then proceeds to analyze the common problems both social work and probation practice face under conditions of economic recession and drastic reductions in funding. This new paperback version comes with a foreword from Shadd Maruna, Professor of Justice and Human Development and Director of the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Queen''s University, Belfast, UK.