Scum is a 1979 British
crime drama film directed by
Alan Clarke, portraying the brutality of life inside a British
borstal. The script was originally made for the
BBC's
Play for Today strand in 1977, however due to the violence depicted, it was withdrawn from broadcast. Two years later, director Alan Clarke and scriptwriter
Roy Minton remade it as a film, first shown on
Channel 4 in 1983. By this time the borstal system had been reformed and eventually allowed the original TV version to be aired.