Brown turns to the hoodies for tips on how to beat knife crime

Amid growing concern over knife crime, the Prime Minister met five teenagers serving community sentences in South London.

He asked the teenagers how knife crime affected them and what could be done to reduce the number of knives being carried on the streets.

Face-to-face: Brown meets young offenders today in London

Mr Brown visited the Reparation Project, based at an adventure playground in Brockley, as he announced a youth crime action plan, which appeared to be identical to measures announced yesterday.

The teenagers go to the centre several times a week to complete community service tasks and learn skills such as woodwork.

The Prime Minister said after the encounter: 'What a project like this does is encourage a young person ... that you can make the most of your talents.

'But you've got to stop offending and you've got to get off the streets - no knives, no guns, no gangs. That's the way forward.'

He added: 'Our message is to punish and prevent - if you commit a crime as a young person you've got to know we're going to be tough - prison is a possibility, young offenders' institutes....

'But we also want to prevent crime, we want to get people off the streets, we want to give them things to do.

'We want to say, where there is a problem in a family with anti-social behaviour, we will intervene quickly through family intervention partnerships, where we say to a family, "You change your lives and we will help you."'

Crime vision: Brown explains the purpose of today's visit

But Mr Brown was today warned against 'spectacular innovations' in the fight against crime as the Government reeled from a U-turn on tackling knife offenders.

Andrew Bridges, the chief inspector of probation, highlighted the risks of trying to find a 'cure-all' in attempts to reduce offending rates.

'We tend to be beguiled by exciting fallacies,' he said. 'We need to focus more on the mundane truths instead of being distracted by thinking that there is a cure-all here. If you are working with offenders, what you need to do is to do the right thing, with the right individual, at the right time and in the right way.'

In his annual report he stressed there were no 'simple solutions ' to reduce offending.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was forced into a humiliating climbdown yesterday on plans to take knife offenders to visit stab victims in casualty after an outcry from doctors.

Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve accused the Government of 'constructing policy in three days, abandoning it in three hours'.

Brown 'n' the hood: The Prime Minister chats to a young offender

Ministers were this afternoon formally announcing a youth crime action plan, which will see the families of up to 20,000 unruly teenagers facing fines and eviction from council houses if they fail to help tackle their offspring's yobbish behaviour.

Other measures are expected to include investment in non-custodial sentences and more support with housing and education. Young people who carry knives could face being forced to spend Friday and Saturday nights in community service and curfews.

Earlier today Boris Johnson told MPs of his concern over knife crime in the capital.

Appearing before the Commons home affairs select committee, the London Mayor said long-term solutions included 'restorative justice schemes' in which offenders were confronted with the consequences of their behaviour, as well as the promotion of positive role models and investments in early intervention projects that would prevent young people drifting into crime.

He also called for a drive to ' deglamorise' knife crime.

'My heart sinks when I hear or read about some of the language that is used to describe the victims of knife crime,' he said. 'This stuff about "You were a good soldier", a "fallen soldier" - we do need to decimate the myth that there is anything romantic or glamorous about these tragic episodes.'