The analysis is that we have an enduring problem because we have failed to create a seamless service that lifts young people out of a life of poverty, crime and drug abuse; that we run the risk of punishing the most vulnerable; and that statistics and reasoning cut no ice with the media, which seem to have an insatiable appetite for demonising the young.
The four strands of the IPPR prescription for dealing with this were interesting: the re-bonding of children and adults, new forms of civic intervention, the erection of firmer boundaries around childhood to better "protect" it and more public resources for the disadvantaged.
Interesting not because of their original or radical character but because only the fourth seemed to imply a role for government. The other three raised again the vexed question of the relationship between the state and the individual. Do we really want or expect further public policy incursions into the home and on to the streets? If this were to be seriously proposed by the Government, the Daily Mail and others would have a field day crying "nanny state".
When young people are on the streets at night the only professionals likely to be alongside them are police officers or youth workers. Not long ago these would be at loggerheads. Now they appear to be uneasy bedfellows creating the protocols of co-habitation as they go.
The prospect of these being joined by an army of intergenerational agents and childhood protection officers is unappealing, and may well drive the young underground to places and spaces that the long arm of the state can never reach.
Bryan Merton is an independent consultant, former HMI and visiting professor at the Youth Affairs Unit, De Montfort University.
