The recent 'teenage terror' stories leave one with an overwhelming sense of despair.

In yesterday's Telegraph Jan Moir expressed the collective outrage we all feel ("I've never felt less like hugging a hoodie").  After outlining the closely knit family that has been destroyed in Warrington she writes:

To be frank, I don't care how difficult the life of the average hoodie has been, or how much any of these callous youths have suffered at the unseen hands of an absent parent, or general, festering resentment that stems from their troubled home situations.

Today, many more commentators address the issue and the associated comments of Cheshire's Chief Constable about the UK's teenage alcohol culture.  ("Our national drinking problem" in The Independent, "Last Orders" in The Times)

Everyone agrees that raising the drinking age is a bad idea that would fail to resolve the real issue.

Decca Aitkenhead's The Guardian does a much better job at identifying root causes ("This kind of drinking is not hedonism, its nihilism"):

"The teenagers who live next door to me are sweet lads - but they literally do not even know how to introduce themselves to someone they don't know. The simple mechanics of making eye contact, shaking hands and saying their own name is completely beyond them - making their world a scary and quite threatening place to be."

It's an insightful piece, but it doesn't offer solutions to the problems she identifies.

David Green, the director of socially-conservative Civitas, is bolder and maps out his remedy in 'Alcohol ban is no answer, good policing is' in The Telegraph.  The headline is slightly misleading; he sees the main solution to be the restoration of the universal two-parent family:

"there is no getting away from the fact that children are more likely to stay away from crime and to lead fuller lives if both their biological parents are committed to their well-being during the two decades it takes to grow up."

The holes is his one-size-fits-all argument are plain to any liberal.

Far more nuanced is Carlo Sarler in The Times ("Don't just blame the parents; blame us too")  He picks up on the same themes as Decca Aitkenhead, but develops them further:

"as every sitcom cast a character to remind us, neighbour came to mean nosy and nosy to mean bad. We became fearful of the accusation of interfering in other people’s lives, let alone in other people’s children and – as that made us unknown to the children and they to us – we became fearful of the children themselves."

If you read nothing else this week, read Carlo Sarler.