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Juveniles on bail awaiting trial will be electronically tagged, home secretary David Blunkett announced this week.

Under the plans, courts will be given powers to tag 12 to 16-year-olds who have been granted bail or remanded into local authority accommodation, where they believe repeat, imprisonable offences are likely to be committed.

The tagging will allow any bail or remand conditions, such as a curfew requirement, to be monitored.

"There will be no 'untouchables' in our criminal justice system," said Blunkett.

But Paul Cavadino, chief executive of rehabilitation charity Nacro, said there were problems with tagging children, "not least the fact that some will regard the tag as a badge of honour".

Bail support and supervision programmes would be more likely to keep them "out of trouble", he added.

Blunkett's measures to tackle youth crime follow confirmation from Bradford Council that it recently issued anti-social behaviour order warning letters to three pupils at the city's Laisterdyke High School.

"The letters were given out in the presence of the police, the school's community officer and their parents and have been successful in putting a stop to their unacceptable conduct," said the council's director of housing Geraldine Howley.

According to the school's head teacher Joan Law, the action was taken to address a succession of computer equipment thefts.

The school believed that working with the council on anti-social behaviour orders would be more effective than excluding the pupils from school.