Home Office guidance on naming and shaming young people given antisocial behaviour orders is in breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, according to youth justice organisations.

The guidance, issued last week, states that people given orders should be named and that local media should be encouraged to run stories about them.

But Article 40 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the UK has signed up to, states that any person under 18 accused or convicted of an offence has the right "to have his or her privacy fully respected at all stages of proceedings".

The guidance refers to a test case where Brent Council won the right to name several young people who had been given orders. The Home Office believes this gives it the legal footing it needs to issue the guidance, but crime-reduction charity Nacro has questioned the legitimacy of the move.

Chris Stanley, head of youth crime at Nacro, said: "There is a clear clash that somebody is going to challenge, and when we put that to the Home Office it says it is relying on the Brent judgment."

At the launch of the guidance, Home Secretary Charles Clarke said: "We are making the position crystal clear - your photo could be all over the local media, your local community will know who you are, and breaching an order could land you in prison."

Last week, the Home Office also released figures showing that 1,826 antisocial behaviour orders were issued to people of all ages in the first nine months of 2004, compared with 1,035 in the whole of 2003.

The figures revealed that of the 3,826 orders issued since April 1999, 45 per cent were given to juveniles and 50 per cent to adults. The age of the remaining five per cent is unknown. In 2003, 42 per cent of orders were breached compared with 36 per cent in 2002.

- www.homeoffice.gov.uk

- See Feature, p14.