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A multi-agency forum should be established to tackle the causes of youth crime, chairperson of the Metropolitan Police Authority Lord Toby Harris urged last week

Harris told a London conference on education and youth crime that there had been a 40 per cent increase in violent street crime over the past year, with the number of young people involved in street crime rising by 57 per cent. Some 65 per cent of people accused of street crime were aged between 10 and 17 years old.

Urging professionals to focus on early interventions, Harris warned: "We must try to intervene long, long before the antisocial behaviour order and tagging is used by looking for the causes and using all the resources available to identify the problems and the individuals most likely to become offenders." Harris, also Labour leader of the Greater London Authority, said the Metropolitan Police had had success with the Safer Streets Campaign, which diverted officers away from traffic to tackling gun and street crime.

But he said this was only a short-term solution: "The long-term answer is not to rob one area of policing to supplement another, but to work together - all of us - but particularly police, education and social services to tackle the causes of youth offending."