Three kids wearing hoodies walking down the street towards you. What do you see? Three people about to mug you? Just another three people passing on the pavement? Or three kids whose birthdays you know? And who do they see in you? A suspicious stranger who doesn’t like them? Or a neighbour they say hello to?

It’s in that range of different actions and reactions that sits so many of the issues around youth crime and fear of youth crime – why it takes place, what its impact is and how to tackle it. It’s about how to tackle the evil-minded, how to reduce irrational fear – and also – and crucially – about how to build happy, cohesive communities where people are free to do there own thing – but also get along with, rather than fear, their neighbours.

So I am grateful to the Local Government Association for bringing us together to discuss this important topic and for inviting me to open this debate.

As an MP that represents an inner London constituency where our youth crime has become a national headline issue with stabbings and gang violence on the door step – answering the question of what we can do to tackle youth criminality is of great concern to me and my constituents.

And as our party’s Youth & Equalities spokesperson, I have been vocal is pressing our pro-youth agenda as opposed to the anti-youth agenda that dominates the news and the rhetoric of Labour and the Tories.

My third role and one that is perhaps less public is my continued and personal interest in home affairs issues. It’s really the area in which I cut my teeth as an MP, and I’m now a co-opted member of our the Home Affairs team in Parliament. I was pleased recently to endorse Chris Huhne’s new policy proposal on youth justice and crime.

The paper was called: “A life away from crime – a new approach to youth justice” – which I think goes someway in answering the question the LGA have set: is the balance right between prevention and enforcement?

The simple answer is no. Better enforcement simply will never be enough in itself.

We know this from some of the crime fighting successes – most notably cutting car thefts by making cars harder to steal, and not just trying to catch and punish car thieves. It’s been a similar issue with mobile phone thefts – yes, high profile policing has its role, but making a stolen phone unusable has a much bigger impact.

We also know this from a simple thought process: imagine a massively successful drive to better enforcement, with five times as many crimes resulting in a court punishment than at the moment. That’d be a pretty impressive leap forward wouldn’t it? But only around 1 in 100 crimes is punished in court at the moment. So we’d be multiplying up hugely the number of court cases and – even with any changes in sentencing rules – the number of people going to jail. And yet – both our courts and prison services are already hugely overloaded and frequently at breaking point. And in the end? We’d only have upped that figure from 1 in 100 to 5 in 100.

This isn’t just theoretical – we’ve seen a massive 86% rise in the number of 15 – 17 years in custody, and yet youth criminality remains the weeping sore of public policy. Because as the courts and jail services crack under the numbers, rehabilitation suffers, reoffending rates go up and crime doesn’t fall.

If you want to cut crime, we need to stop people committing it not just be punishing but also by preventing. That’s why I – and my party – are so keen to drastically increase spending on youth service provision. We have plenty of ideas of how increased spending would be spent. But sadly we seem alone in the national parties in advocating a coherent set policy that would see a significant redistribution of resources in favour of spending money on youth services to prevent crime in the first place.

The logic of this seems indisputable and the finances alone are pretty sound – preventing crime saves on money further through the judicial and criminal systems. In any question of how public resources should be allocated – prevention is always better than cure – if for no other reason than that it is cheaper. There are many five star hotels that are cheaper than a night at young offenders’ institution.

Our Home Affairs paper sets out clearly how we would charge local councils to draw up Youth Community Plans for more youth activity. But more radical than that, we would want to pass real spending powers to youth councils and the Youth Parliament.

Let’s be honest – what does a group of crusty councillors and politicians like myself know about providing service that will really capture the imagination of young people and instill the idea that there are alternatives to crime? A dilapidated youth centre, with ping pong and servicing Kia-Ora and a few stale biscuits is not going to cut the mustard with any self respecting teenager.

Another part of prevention is getting knives and guns off the streets. I have little doubt that this can be achieved by intelligence-led policing. Whilst not a new policy, the Liberal Democrat position of 10,000 more police officers instead of ID cards is relevant to our discussion. These officers, with youth dedicated PCSOs and neighbourhood teams, would be better placed to identify young people carrying offensive weapons.

And then there is rehabilitation, where local authorities have a pivotal role to play in rehabilitation. Whilst some young offenders do require incarceration where public safety as risk, prisons for young people just don’t work. Whilst they might create a few months respite for the communities plagued by antisocial behaviour, just think of how more anti-social those people are with the skills they have learnt on the inside.

Punishing someone for a crime in the past, but setting them up to offend many more times in the future is just short-sighted – vindictive rather than effective.

Liberal Democrats in Islington led the way with successful Acceptable Behaviour Contracts, which have slowed superseded ASBOs. The point is to work with the young person in addressing the causing of the problem and to set realistic targets – looking not just to remedying the past but also to stopping more crimes being committed in the future.

Anyway, I have spoken enough. I am keen to hear about successful ideas from the floor of how your local authorities have been addressing this issue.

But just to conclude. There is no silver bullet. It is a situation that is exacerbated by gimmicks and political attempts to steal the headlines by out toughing each other.

But that is just part of the story. I think at the heart of liberalism is the genuine belief of personal freedom – and one of those freedoms is to be young. If we continue to demonise our youth, neglect public service provision and treat young criminals as outcasts is it little wonder they will turn their backs on us and ignore the rules we set.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008