TO WAKE up in the morning and discover that your car has been broken in to or vandalised is one of the irritants of modern life. The victims of such crimes are faced with the nuisance of arranging for repairs and contacting insurance companies. Their property has been damaged and their space has been invaded. What has happened to them might not count as a major crime, but it is extremely upsetting.

Such problems are highlighted in residential areas close to the centre of York, where most houses lack garages and cars have to be parked on the street. Not only that, but many motorists have to pay City of York Council for the privilege of parking outside their own homes.

For residents of one York housing estate, such problems reached a peak at the weekend when nearly a dozen vehicles were broken into at a car park that serves three blocks of flats in Coggan Close, South Bank. Thieves appear to have picked out cars that did not have modern alarm systems, which suggests that they worked methodically and knew what they were up to. It also suggests that car alarms might be a good investment.

According to one aggrieved local, "groups of lads" come on to the estate and cause problems. Whether or not such youths were behind Saturday's incidents, it is a sad fact of modern life that we hear all too often about crime among the young.

A new report from the York-based Joseph Rowntree Foundation, released today, finds that almost half of school children aged 11 to 17 have committed a crime. The report, based on a study of 14,000 secondary school pupils who filled in confidential questionnaires, also uncovered disturbing evidence of under-age drinking, alongside violence, weapon-carrying and fights.

All of this will make for gloomy reading. Yet we should not get carried away. Most teenagers are good most of the time, and often they can surprise with their good deeds, as illustrated by the Huntington School pupils who walked 15 miles at the weekend to raise money in memory of their classmate Jamie Bucknell, who died last year.

Updated: 10:44 Monday, April 08, 2002