The Youth have taken over the streets. They run riot and drag race, fight and copulate in car parks. At night the riot police contain their orgies of violence and enforce a strict curfew. In a long-term effort to control the menace of feral youths ransacking society, the government have introduced a mandatory interview process to decide who is allowed to become a parent and who has to donate their child to one of the Supervised Rearing Centres.
We follow Papa Joe, who is one of the problem youths. He’s twenty-five, but lives at home with his parents and hangs out with a gang of teenage trouble-makers. He has a pregnant girlfriend, Mary, but on the eve of their interview with the Parental Review Authority, he has sex with another girl, Annie, and brings her home to meet the family. That was just after he had petrol-bombed a house in a revenge attack, badly injuring his target.
He has a supportive family, friends who look out for him, a pregnant girlfriend; so why can’t Joe just grow up and act his age? Is it his fault, his parent’s or society’s?