Young offenders should be diverted from a life of crime at an earlier stage, spending watchdogs have concluded. According to the Audit Commission, effective intervention in the lives of potential teenage criminals could save them from prison and other expensive regimes.

In a separate report, the National Audit Office suggests other non-custodial alternatives lead to more re-offending than would otherwise be expected.

Phil Willis, education spokesman, said: "Endless empty promises and yet more targets will not change the depressing fact that youngsters excluded from school are far more likely to be tomorrow's criminals.

"Our school system is obsessed with meeting targets for GCSEs and A levels, when what is required is a radical re-engineering of what, where and how young people learn.

"But such options need financial support. In a climate where schools are cutting budgets, real improvement will not happen unless the Government changes its priorities."

Forum Response: Association of Teachers and Lecturers

Dr Mary Bousted, ATL's general secretary said: "ATL would fully support any plans to make education relevant to the individual needs of all pupils but the government will have to accept that the resource implications of such a strategy are not only large but crucial.

"An inclusion strategy done on the cheap is likely to result in falling standards in schools where young offenders are readmitted without proper support.

"Politicians must not forget or ignore the rights of the vast majority of well- behaved and well-adjusted young people who only get one chance to get a decent education. Their rights must not be diminished in a drive to include in the education process those young people who have fallen foul of the system.

"Teachers are already playing a key role in promoting social inclusion. If this policy is to be further promoted, teachers and disaffected youngsters will need access to support from a range of professionals, including social workers, community workers and educational psychologists."

Forum Response: The Prince's Trust

A Prince's Trust spokesman told ePolitix.com: "Our research shows young people are not picked up soon enough and that intervention needs to be targeted at key stages of young people's lives - not a one size fits all solution. Early intervention is vital, but we need to be prepared to step in at other difficult stages in a young person's life.

"That is why The Prince's Trust works with young people in schools offering an alternative curriculum to re-engage them in education, with the unemployed through personal development programmes in the community, with those in and leaving care and with offenders and ex-offenders to help them gain practical skills.

"Through a systematic and more targeted approach we can prevent young people offending. However for those that do end up in the prison system, learning opportunities and support when they return to their communities is key to their rehabilitation. Working in partnership with the Prison Service we are looking to offer more young offenders the practical support and skills they need to break the offending cycle."

Forum Response: CARE

A spokesman from CARE told epolitix: "We welcome the Audit Commission's report. In one sense it simply confirms what many people have been saying for years, namely that the criminal justice system is an extremely expensive and ineffective way to deal with young offenders when what they lack, for a number of reasons, is the ability and the opportunity to make good choices.

"Taking a step back, the government could do worse than consider what more it could do to resource parents whose responsibilty it is to ensure that their children know how to behave. Evidence suggests that 'fatherlessness' and family breakdown can increasingly be identified as a cause of petty anti-social and, indeed, criminal behaviour.

"CARE's Remand Fostering scheme adopts just such an approach with young people who find themselves in the criminal justice system. The objectiveis not to 'curb offending' but to give young people the tools they need to make good choices - whether that's a sense of self discipline orstrong releationships with others.

"This is done by temporarily removing the young person from negative peer influences and enaging him or her in a full time eductaion and other activities within the context of a supported and supportive foster home.

"Ultimately, it's a question of the taking opportunities to invest in the lives of young people at every stage and not relying on the blunt instrument which is the criminal justice system to turn lives around.

"For our part, CARE's Remand Fostering programme is suffering from the government's lack of commitment to rebalancing a perverse system whicheffectively operates financial disincentives for positive, economic and life changing alternatives. In the next few months, two of our centres will close because central government will pay for custodial sentences while obliging local authorities to fund remand fostering referrals."