LIKE almost all of us, apart possibly from former Tory leader William Hague, who can't ever have been that young, I was a teenager once.

Now I've got two of my own, with a third waiting in the wings of teendom.

Even from this distant ledge, I remember what it was like and, living with two teens, I get daily updates to refresh my dusty first-hand experience.

Being young is something we all go through. It's one of those unavoidable things, like old age but probably more fun - and with rosier prospects.

The teenagers in my house are not unusual, having all the expected accessories, including dizzy height, large feet, mad hair, guitars, bikes with often-punctured tyres, an obsession with computer games and music (sometimes ear-splitting, sometimes surprisingly melodic), a liking for cinema, television and occasionally books, along with the usual food fads (anything wholemeal gets one of the boys into an unwholesome grump).

Naturally enough, I think my teens are mostly marvellous, apart from those occasions when they are not - which occur in roughly the same proportion as the ups-and-downs of adults.

Most of their friends seem mostly marvellous too, or at least the ones I've met - bright and funny young people with minds and mouths of their own. Big feet too, but that seems to go with the territory.

So my experience of teenagers is generally positive. I'm not being unduly idealistic here, and I know some teens cause problems, but that's just the way it is for me most of the time and, I suspect, for many others too.

Yet we live in strangely distorted times when the teenagers we know are mostly fine - and those we read about in the newspapers or see depicted on the TV news are devil-spawned yobs from hell.

Ever since this Government decided to tackle so-called yob culture we seem to live in a land where teenagers are fair game, paraded before us in their hoodies and blamed for just about everything.

So I gave a little cheer last week when a High Court judge demolished a key plank of the Government's crusade against yobs by ruling that it was illegal for children to be forcibly removed from curfew zones.

Lord Justice Brooke found in favour of a 15-year-old boy - known in court as W - from south-west London, who claimed his human rights had been breached by the antisocial behaviour orders.

Under the Anti Social Behaviour Act 2003, one of the Government's more crudely populist measures, any unaccompanied under-16s going in a curfew zone between 9pm and 6am faced being escorted home by the police - irrespective of whether they had done anything wrong.

W was said in court to be "extremely distressed" by this restriction and felt his movements were being unfairly curbed, preventing him or his friends from, say, going to the cinema or practicing in their band.

In a statement after his victory in court, W said: "Of course I have no problem with being stopped by the police if I have done something wrong. But they shouldn't be allowed to treat me like a criminal just because I am under 16."

Quite right, young W.

My thoughts chimed with the Children's Society which, welcoming the ruling, said it was "time to stop targeting and demonising young people" and "include them properly as citizens and members of their communities".

It is surely a step too far if the police can round up law-abiding citizens, including teenagers, and escort them home for doing nothing at all.

The decision in London has repercussions across the country, including York, where a no-go zone was introduced at Clifton seven weeks ago.

York's neighbourhood police team is unhappy at the ruling, which is understandable because their job has been made harder.

Yet the wider point remains that the Government was wrong to allow police to round up teenagers who have done nothing wrong.

Just because some teenagers cause trouble we have all fallen in with the idea that all teens are trouble with a capital T, rabble-roused into a state of teen-phobic hysteria by a prime minister who's got some of his own.

But perhaps they are never allowed out anywhere.

Updated: 09:23 Thursday, July 28, 2005