It is a sad, mad litany: more than 20 teenagers stabbed to death in London this year. Nationwide, 22,000 knife attacks in the past 12 months. In South London two policemen are attacked by a mob of 30 teenagers after they had asked one to pick up her litter. The watching crowd, far from siding with the police, joined in the attack.

According to a recent Home Office survey, more than a fifth of young people admit to committing a potentially criminal offence, from drug dealing to robbery and assault.

It reads like some dystopian fiction, but it is fact. It seems hard to believe that in the 1940s George Orwell could write: “The gentleness of the English civilisation is perhaps its most marked characteristic.” In 1946 the Hungarian humorist George Mikes observed that: “An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.” What happened? And can anything be done?

The suggestions are legion: make violent criminals visit their victims; curfews; more police; tougher sentences. All of these have a part to play. But we also know that larger cultural forces have been at work: the breakdown of the family, loss of community, and an almost total collapse of respect for authority.

It seems barely credible that the English were once known for their politeness, gentility and reserve. L. P. Hartley was right: the past is a foreign country. They did things differently there.

But go farther back still, and you make a discovery. In the 1820s it was unsafe to walk the streets of London at night. That is why, in 1829, Sir Robert Peel created the Metropolitan Police. At first it was an unpopular institution. People often jeered the police, and physical attacks on them were common. In Oliver Twist Charles Dickens portrayed a gang culture not unlike today’s. Rates of theft, murder and violence were high. Drunken violence was routine. The percentage of children born outside marriage had rocketed since 1750. Sounds familiar? It turns out that we have been here before.

Then it changed: that is the curious fact. Between 1850 and 1950 there was a sustained, year-on-year reduction of crime, violence, illegitimacy and alcoholism until England became the mild-mannered place that Orwell and Mikes described in the 1940s.

How did it happen? More effective policing may have played a part. But according to the Harvard criminologist James Q. Wilson, the major change was due to the emergence of a series of social and cultural institutions, among them youth groups such as the YMCA (founded in 1844), temperance societies, state schools, voluntary associations, charities and friendly societies.

Far and away the most influential were Sunday schools, at which attendance tripled between 1821 and 1851. All these institutions aimed at the development of character and habits of order, punctuality and effort, the “vigorous virtues”. Wilson calls this a social investment in inculcating in people an internalised commitment to self-control. That lies at the very heart of the law-abiding society. Without it, all else will fail.

The driver of all these changes was religion, and there’s the rub. Can’t be done today, you’ll say. We’re no longer a religious society. Measured by church attendance, that may be true. But measured by the high and rising demand for faith schools, it is false. Sceptics will say that parents want faith schools not because they are religious but because the schools produce better results. But that has to do with their ethos, and ethos is indivisible from faith. And the search for faith may come from another, unexpected direction.

One of the most unusual books I’ve read this year is called Do Hard Things, subtitled “A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations”.

A surprise American bestseller, it tells how two 19-year-olds, Alex and Brett Harris, decided to protest against the idea that the teenage years are a “vacation from responsibility”.

They started a blog. It struck a chord with many of their contemporaries. It challenged and empowered them to show moral leadership. It changed lives.

That, I suspect, is how it will happen here also, not because of any moralising by adults, but by teenagers themselves, sickened of seeing friends killed, of living in fear, of seeing lives wasted, of a culture of nihilism and despair. That is when they will rediscover the power of faith to create meaningful lives and rebuild a society of responsibility and hope.

Sir Jonathan Sacks is Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth