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Children’s charities want to influence the debate on youth crime and ensure young people get a chance to express their views. They are banking on Mark Luetchford to help achieve this. Alison Miller spoke to him.

Mark Luetchford, co-ordinator of Shape Children’s Lives & the Youth Crime Debate, is passionate about strategic thinking because, he says simply, "it makes a difference to what you can achieve".

Luetchford has been something of a mover and shaker in the voluntary sector "for causes he believes in". He began his career in this area in the late 1980s working in international development for War on Want, and has since worked for a range of campaigning organisations, including Oxfam where he campaigned for cutting third world debt and the abolition of anti-personnel mines.

As co-ordinator of Shape, he is using his campaigning and strategic planning expertise to influence the course of the debate about youth crime. Shape was launched in July this year, and is a coalition between Barnardo’s, the Children’s Society, youth crime charity Nacro, the National Children’s Bureau, NCH and the NSPCC. Funded by the Rethinking Crime and Punishment initiative of the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust, it aims to raise the level of public debate around youth crime by giving clear information, comment and analysis of the issues, and by giving a voice to young people.

Luetchford points out that young people are more likely to be the victims of crime than carry it out, yet the public perception is of gangs of young people roaming the streets hell bent on trouble.

He believes there is an anomaly between the readiness to sympathise with neglected children and the attitude to them when they get into trouble. "It’s not surprising that some families under enormous pressure find it hard to cope and, rather than labelling them as neighbours from hell, we need to find a way to help them bring up their children so they are less likely to get in trouble."

Crucial, he believes, to changing the way young people are treated is to change the way they are often portrayed in the media and perceived by the public. "If we can prove to the public that young people will stay out of trouble if they are helped instead of being treated punitively, we are on to a winner," he says.

"We need to give the politicians a different script, so when they are lobbied by their constituents who are demanding severe sanctions against kids hanging around outside their houses, they have some answers for them."

Tackling the hard line tabloid press is a taller order, but Luetchford believes it is important to try. "It is very difficult to influence the tabloid agenda because they don’t believe the charitable sector represents anybody apart from liberal ‘do gooders’." He believes that harnessing the power of celebrity can be a good way to counter this, and he is looking for the right celebrity to endorse Shape’s work.

An important strand of that work is giving a voice to young people, and it has recruited 10 young media representatives who have contributed to a wide variety of programmes including the BBC’s Newsround and Panorama and Radio 4’s Today programme.

Luetchford does not see Shape as being in confrontation with the government, and says that much good work is being carried out at the Youth Justice Board on alternatives to custody. He also welcomes the antisocial behaviour unit’s efforts to involve communities in solving problems locally. However, Shape is concerned about the emphasis within the Antisocial Behaviour Bill on "protecting communities from young people" which, it says, is in danger of demonising them further.

"I see our role as clearing a space where the public policy debate on youth crime can take place in an informed way," he says. "We must engage with politicians who at the moment only hear one side of the argument. What they don’t hear is the voice of the young people on the streets."

- See www.shapethedebate.org.uk