A damning report on the state of childhood in Britain paints a grim, almost Dickensian portrait of this country for anyone still wearing short trousers. Whether in the area of child mental health, or infant mortality, or childhood obesity, or smacking, or teenage pregnancy, or gin-sipping parents, or the widening gaps between rich and poor, the Children's Commissioners for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland too often find Britain wanting. There is a danger here that official bodies designed to protect children and promote their interests instead end up demonising them. Britain's children are, generally, a source of pride to their families, their schools and their communities.

But at the hot core of the commissioners' investigation are disturbing conclusions about the criminalisation of young people in Britain. These findings are as alarming as they are shaming. Britain, say the commissioners, is a country where young people face a greater chance of being locked up than anywhere else in Europe; where an ASBO culture has criminalised thousands of youngsters for often trifling transgressions. Legislation to outlaw antisocial behaviour has sucked ever-greater numbers of children into the criminal justice system.

Such criminalisation is not helpful: not to the ASBO-branded children, and not to society. Using a show of authoritative toughness to tame teenagers who are creating havoc by a show of street-level toughness is not just paradoxical, it has also proved tragically unprofitable.

Britain may have relatively few problem teenagers, but they exert an influence on society disproportionate to their numbers. These children trigger not only the spread of knife crime, but also the corrosive fear of knife crime among people unlikely ever to be its victim. The discouraging news is that addressing this challenge is costlier, more complex and more labour-intensive than ASBOs and jail cells. And the heartening news? It's that the alternative approaches are proving more fruitful. Children scarred by ASBOs or prison are more likely to reoffend than those who are warmed by an embrace of safety and tenderness by programmes such as Camila Batmanghelidjh's Kids Company, which returns as many as 87 per cent of its intake back into education and employment. This compares with a national reoffending rate of more than 80 per cent.

Problem children broadly divide into what might be called the initiators - unloved, emotionally fragile children forged by their brutish upbringing into a life of violence - and the imitators, those who absorb and mimic the demeanour of the initiators because they see it as the surest way to survive on mean city streets. Tackling the problem of youth violence once the youths are already teenagers makes it more difficult and more intensive to fix the mess. It also makes the chances of success slimmer. We should resort to zero tolerance for violent youths only once we have adopted zero tolerance for abusive, neglectful, drug-dependent parents who help to incubate so many of these youngsters. Ignoring the problem until it has hatched into maturity leaves society paying too high a price for the consequences. For want of a nail the shoe, the horse, the rider and eventually the battle were lost. Acting early to meet the challenge of fractured families offers the best hope of winning this battle.