Living with his widowed mother (Thora Hird), Jackie Knowles (Richard Attenborough) can't imagine how he'll ever have enough money to marry his girlfriend, Kitty (Barbara Murray). Agreeing to drive the getaway car in a robbery, Knowles's plan goes awry when he is captured and sentenced to three years in a reform school, in this 1949 film. New friends Alfie (Dirk Bogarde) and Bill (Jimmy Hanley) provide support and the institution's governor (Jack Warner) is compassionate, but for Knowles, life is going to be very different from how he had imagined it.