Youth in Coventry

The IPPR think-tank has found that 65% of Germans would be willing to intervene if they saw a group of 14-year-old boys vandalising a bus shelter, compared with just 34% of Britons. Britons were also three times more likely to cite young people "hanging around" as a problem than they were to complain about noisy neighbours. The rhetoric is that youth don't face any consequences for their actions, but record numbers of children are going to court, and over 2000 ASBOs have been issued since 1999.

Pam Hibbert of Barnardo's: "Young crime in itself has remained fairly static in the last 10 years - it is a minority that cause problems and retaliate. The demonisation of children and young people in some sections of the media and when politicians refer to youngsters as yobs - that breeds the actual fear."

A spokeswoman for YouthNet - an online charity which provides information, advice and guidance for people aged 16 to 24 through two websites - said young people's achievements were often overlooked: "While young people acknowledge that a minority of their peers can be anti-social, they'd like to point out that not all young people are the same and the majority, who contribute to society, work hard and have fun without being destructive, are often overlooked because the good things they do don't make news."