According to a new report from the UK’s children’s commissioners, our young people are not becoming increasingly criminal; our society is simply treating them like they are. The report states that whilst crime committed by children fell between 2002 and 2006, the numbers being criminalised went up by over a quarter.

This clampdown might be justified if the offences were actually causing harm. But many young people are now being subject to authoritarian interference before they have actually done anything tangible. They are, for example, chastised for “hanging around” certain areas or wearing hoodies. In Essex, “forward intelligence teams” allow police officers to follow and record young individuals who might engage in antisocial behaviour. Being perceived as a threat, it seems, now constitutes an offence worthy of police intervention.

Moreover, instead of being punished as individuals for specific acts, young people are now being penalised as a homogenous whole. The commissioners’ report criticises mosquitoes, devices which drive all young people away from public areas regardless of what they are actually doing there. The message these generalised “solutions” send is a dangerous one. How can we teach young people not to judge people by the colour of their skin – or dismiss all adults as unworthy of respect – when they are targeted in such a blanket way?

Looking at the media, “British young people” come across as something akin to rats. They’re all the same, and they all need fixing. In 2005, a media survey found that 71% of stories about young people were negative, with one third focussing on crime. But 70% of our young people’s behaviour is not negative, and our perceptions have become skewed.

Criminalising young people doesn’t just lack principle; it lacks pragmatism, because it can perpetuate the problems it’s trying to solve. Putting people into young offender institutions doesn’t “teach them a lesson”, it teaches them new tricks, and encourages them to define themselves as criminals.

The same applies to those young people who suffer from discrimination and stereotypes outside the prison walls. Authority and adults come to be seen as “out to get you”, rather than something to respect.

Discrimination also makes young people apathetic. If a potential employer has already labelled you a troublemaker, what’s the point of applying for the job? If you don’t think the police will trust you when you say that you were merely loitering outside the newsagents to check your shopping list, what’s the point of trying to have an honest dialogue with them?

If you lock young people up – be it behind metal bars or psychological labels – you lock a mindset in. Instead of assuming the negative, we should have better hopes and higher expectations for our young people – we need to have faith in our young people if they are to have faith in us.

Instead of blaming young people for the rise in offences, let’s have the courage to listen to the experts we’ve appointed. Let’s make an effort to see the subtlety behind the stereotypes, and question whether young people really have become more antisocial to the rest of society, or whether society has simply become more antisocial to them.

About this article

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Monday June 09 2008. It was last updated at 17:53 on June 09 2008