Is the Criminalisation of Child Harm and Injury in the Interests of the Child? The impetus to prosecute in cases of child harm and injury has increased considerably over recent years with earlier involvement of the police in child protection and incremental legal reform which aims for more child-centred practices. Research on the implementation of the Memorandum of Good Practice is presented to propose that the prosecution of child abuse is neither achieved nor achievable in the majority of cases and that the assumption on which the criminalisation of child abuse is based should be challenged. T he decision to pursue criminal proceedings in relation to child abuse is one which is played out in practice daily. However, there has been very little open public debate about the effectiveness of the criminalisation of child abuse per se. Recently in the UK an amendment to the way in which children give evidence in criminal proceedings has provoked some debate for social work practitioners. This paper draws on the opportunity provided by a change in legislation to review the notion of criminalisation by offering some empirical data to inform a wider debate. The admissibility of children's evidence in chief on video- tape was sanctioned by the 1991 Criminal Justice Act. To accompany this amendment the Home Office and the Depart- ment of Health issued guidance entitled the Memorandum of Good Practice on Interviewing Children for Criminal Proceedings (MOGP) (Home Office, 1992). Social service departments and police forces all over the country have now implemented the MOGP and have incorporated its guidance into their policies and procedures. As far as the Home Office is concerned the advice in the MOGP is relevant to criminal proceedings, and its intention is two- fold; to get better quality evidence from children's testimony, and to spare the children from having to give their evidence in chief in court. As such the document contributes to one of many reforms over recent years which have these two prin- ciples as their justificationÐbetter evidence and more child- centred, victim-sensitive criminal court practices. Amongst these reforms have been the introduction of live link video, CCC 0951±0605/97/020097±11 # 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY VOLUME 11 (1997) pp. 97±107 Corinne Wattam Lancaster University