The authors of this article were the keynote speakers at a conference carrying the above title, held at HM YOI Moorland, in October 2000. The purpose of the conference was to concentrate on young adults sentenced life, in their own right, rather than as a sub-group of adult life prisoners. The speakers and conference members together examined, as this article will do, the traumatic backgrounds of some of these young men, the policy gap in addressing their special needs, and the constituents of a groupwork intervention which helps them to own their offending.