By Dominic Casciani BBC News Online community affairs reporter

Coronation Street: Tackling its own hooligans

If you watch Coronation Street then you don't have to look out of your window for signs of hooligans.

In one recent episode teenager David Platt and friends are playing football against a garage door, annoying Rita and Norris in the Kabin newsagents.

Norris decides to "teach them a lesson" - and stabs the ball.

But other adults - including Rita - say he has gone too far and that most young people are very nice.

It may be a light-hearted story line, but it represents a popular perception that hooliganism and teenage years are somehow inextricably linked.

And, according to campaigners, the national mood is reaching a point where society virtually criminalises being a teenager.

Dillon Heffernan knows a thing or two about being a teenager today.

The 16-year-old Leighton Buzzard student says his sole crime is to wear T-shirts from that fashionable store whose name almost spells the F-word.

The money they would spend tomorrow on policing could be spent today on keeping open threatened youth clubs like the one in our community Dillon Heffernan

Guilty as charged on the T-shirt front, he pleads. But he asks why should he also be penalised for hanging around with friends?

"The government seems very keen to talk about young people but much more reluctant to actually talk to them," says Dillon, a member of the four-year-old UK Youth Parliament.

"This legislation is about young people and yet we were not consulted - surely this was something of paramount importance?"

"Teenagers are being labelled so that when a pensioner reads about hooligans in the tabloids, and then sees a group hanging around, he will be ringing the police.

"I'm not going to defend the actions of those causing anti-social behaviour - but wearing a hooded top and a baseball cap does not exactly make someone a threat."

Anti-social measures

Home Secretary David Blunkett's Anti-Social Behaviour Bill will shortly become law and he stresses how it puts powers in communities to clean up their streets.

ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR BILL: MEASURES AFFECTING TEENS Powers to disperse groups of two or more people Powers to return a child under the age of 16 to their home Removal of reporting restrictions for children subject to Anti-Social Behaviour Orders Parenting 'contracts' where children have been excluded from schools

But according to a coalition of charities, measures aimed at young people are at best ill-thought out - and at worst draconian.

The bill gives police new powers to exclude anyone under the age of 16 from an area after 9pm if they unsupervised by an adult.

On the authority of a senior officer, police will be able to disperse or send home groups of two or more unsupervised teenagers.

This may appear a reasonable power to deal with anti-social behaviour.

But campaigners say the power to move on teenagers simply because their "presence" gives rise to "alarm or distress" is a step too far.

What causes "alarm or distress" is not defined, says Patricia Durr of the Children's Society.

TEENAGE DISPERSAL PROPOSALS This is the imposition of government morality in relation to 15-year-olds who have done nothing more wrong than be on the street on a warm summer's night in the school holidays Anthony Jennings QC

She predicts it may be sufficient for a resident to take offence to how teenagers dress for police to be required to act.

"We believe this is simply a fast-track curfew affecting all young people," she says.

"It seems that how this is going to work in practice will largely depend on individual police officers' judgement.

"But the legislation suggests the very presence of young people is a problem and it pits them against their own communities.

"Ultimately the law may increase tensions between young people and the police rather than dealing with them."

Legal challenges ahead?

In a legal opinion for the coalition against the bill, leading lawyer Anthony Jennings QC predicts the legislation will beach a host of human rights safeguards.

"This [legislation] is unduly harsh and punishes someone for merely being present. The order can last up to six months and amounts to a blanket curfew," says Mr Jennings.

"This is the imposition of government morality in relation to 15-year-olds who have done nothing more wrong than be on the street on a warm summer's night in the school holidays."

If this opinion is correct, the home secretary could face a string of High Court challenges within months of the legislation coming into force.

More youth clubs

It may not, of course, come to that - and the government itself funds a host of new projects aimed at helping young people into adulthood.

This is not about bashing young people - but you can't be non-judgemental if you live next door to the family from hell Home Secretary David Blunkett

David Blunkett himself says three schemes he has introduced in government - Sure Start, learning mentors and Connexions advice service - are key to supporting young people.

But he remains adamant that complaints from the Children's Society are out of all proportion because a helping hand has to be backed up with enforcement.

So will the youths of Leighton Buzzard still be hanging around after the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill is passed?

"Young people feel safer hanging around in groups - but they also hang around because they haven't got anything else to do - or can't afford it if it's there," says Dillon Heffernan.

"The money they would spend tomorrow on policing could be better spent today on keeping open threatened youth clubs like the one in our community.

"And if they had put the money in from the beginning, we wouldn't even need to talk about this."