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It brought together more than 100 young people from a Black Police Association youth leadership project with youth workers and others to discuss their experiences of crime and policing.

As the audience gathered, the projection screen carried the images that overshadow such events – Stephen Lawrence, 10 years after his racist murder, Damilola Taylor, and some of the victims of the current surge of gun crime. The young people were passionate and intense as they debated why violent crime cast such a shadow over their lives, and why they remained so alienated from official structures, including the police. Again and again, the word "respect" occurs – respect for young people, meaning "listen to us, offer us a decent alternative to drugs and crime, treat us as part of the community and not just as a threat to it".

This event happened to focus on the experience of young black people, and there is indeed a race dimension to be understood and worked with. But I know for certain that many of the same themes emerge from discussions with any group of young people.

A few weeks previously,Young People and Street Crime, a report co-written by researcher Marion Fitzgerald, confirmed an important truth which it is all too easy to lose behind the pressure for short-term solutions and quick wins: long-term investment in community ties is more valuable than specific crimefighting initiatives. Unsurprisingly, though this message is often lost as well, research shows that street crime is most likely to occur in areas where children of the "have-nots" rub alongside, but are not socially integrated with, children of the more affluent, and in areas where social ties are weakest. Huge inequalities in wealth and background confront some of these young people who are often neither personally well-equipped to avoid the consequences, nor protected by a strong social fabric.

Street crime is most likely to occur in areas where children of the ‘have-nots’ rub alongside, but are not socially integrated with, children of the more affluent

Unfortunately for all of us, the growing inequalities of the past three decades have been compounded by developments – some the result of deliberate policy, others unintended – that have further weakened the social structures of our neighbourhoods, especially in our cities. Greater mobility, for instance, while being an indicator of personal freedom, is an enormous challenge to communities of all kinds, as the headteacher of any inner-city school will confirm. Diversity has many benefits, but we have to work harder to create the conditions within which a diverse range of households can feel connected, safe and mutually dependent.

The challenges are awesome, but we may be better-placed today to tackle the causes of crime and lessen the fear of crime and disorder than we have been in recent times. Area regeneration initiatives, although They too few and too localised, are showing signs of being exactly the kind of long-term, community-building, participatory programmes that we need. Backed by a broader and deeper approach towards engaging young people – both formally, through youth parliaments and through the Young Black Police Association, for example, and informally – we could be about to see a very fundamental change.

The case for such an approach, alongside a commitment to tackling child poverty, needs to be remade every day. We have to be prepared to accept that sometimes we get it wrong. We also have to accept that there is a painful tension between focusing resources on the most intensely deprived communities and the understandable resentments of residents in the "next-poorest" communities, who see themselves losing out. Such tensions are inherent in the area-based approach.