Youngsters feeling aggrieved by the dispersal order slapped on Middlesbrough's Gresham ward need only to look at our paper today to see what can happen when anti-social behaviour gets out of hand.
The action aimed at reclaiming the streets from unruly drunken gangs of teenagers is tough. But if it gets the message home it might stop them from ending up in bigger trouble - like tearaway Wayne Robinson, who is now behind bars.
Youngsters do need to be able to go out and enjoy themselves. They do need to meet up with friends.
But when a group turns into an intimidating gang, drinking and smashing bottles of alcohol, threatening and verbally abusing passers-by, something needs to be done.
On this estate people say they are forced to cross the street to avoid the gangs, and some elderly folk lock themselves in their homes.
This is no way to live. And it is to be hoped the dispersal order will bring home to the youngsters and their parents the seriousness of the distress they are causing.
If it can be nipped in the bud now it will be a blessed relief to the long-suffering people on the estate whose quality of life is suffering.
More than that, it will hopefully stop the youngsters' troublesome ways from developing into the kind of activity that has landed 21-year-old Robinson in jail.
His gang caused mayhem on a Stockton estate, leading to him being placed on an anti-social behaviour order, and ultimately ending in him being dragged back before the courts for stiffer punishment.
There is no suggestion the younger children at Gresham are in the same league, but the similarities are there in the way people's lives suffer as a result of their actions.
The dispersal order is tough, particularly on the innocent kids who will find themselves under scrutiny from the law for no reason of their own. But at the end of the month, if parents and children have learned a lesson about how to behave in a less aggressive way, it will have been worth the trouble.
