We are not the first society to despair of our children and young people. In A Winter's Tale, Shakespeare dreams of a time when there would be no age between 15 and 20, or that young men would sleep through the rest, because there is nothing in between but stealing, fighting, “getting whores with child and upsetting the ancientry”. But what we have now, a widely shared contempt for children, because they are children, is much more severe.

Barnardo's internet film Hunting is intentionally provocative and with a script which appears to be widely exaggerated. The actors talk of children as parasites, as vermin and suggest the solution, to rid ourselves of these cruel and ruthless creatures, is to shoot a few and if that doesn't work shoot a few more. Yet every word spoken in the film has been taken from comment made by the public on national newspaper websites.

Are these the views of just a few cranks? Troublingly, the answer is, no. In Barnardo's poll, conducted for us by YouGov, more than half of the 2,000 adults approached, agreed that children behave like animals. Almost half thought that feral was an appropriate adjective to describe children. A third believed our streets were infested with children.

I don't think I'm a soft touch when it comes to children. During my time in the prison service I saw, very starkly, the damage which can be caused by a minority of children and young people. And I acknowledge entirely that some children, many even, need to be incarcerated when their offending is serious or deeply persistent. But is this a reason for the casual condemnation of all children?

This matters for a number of reasons. First it has allowed us to drift toward an increasingly destructive and, in terms of effectiveness, useless penal approach to children, even very young children. Last year we locked up almost 600 children aged 14 and younger, whose incarceration under Margaret Thatcher's government would have been illegal.

Second, these attitudes unfairly condemn a whole generation. Virtually no parent reading this paper will have failed to spot notices in thousands of corner shops around Britain which limit entry to two children at a time. Why don't we protest at this attitude, which sees every single child as a potential thief?

Children we work with tell us how much they are aware of the resentment in which they are held. They feel helpless to do anything about it. Forty per cent felt they were judged without being given a chance. And nearly half believed the continually negative portrayal of young people fed the bad behaviour of the minority.

We need to be as quick to correct this casual and dismissive and cruel language about children in the same way we have ceased to tolerate racist language. To allow it to continue diminishes children and it diminishes us.

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