PEOPLE in Dartford are living in fear of a minority of young people who commit crimes in the area.

But Inspector Martin Cunningham of north Kent police has moved to reassure people the situation is not out of control.

Dartford Borough Council's annual crime and disorder audit shows the area has the highest recorded crime figures in Kent per head of population.

Although this is in part due to the road and rail links with Europe and the effect of crime at Bluewater shopping centre, the report says: "There is clear evidence a high percentage of offenders are young people."

One of the key findings of the report shows a large proportion of crime in Dartford is committed by youths aged between between 12 and 20. More crime is committed by youths between 14 and 21 with the peak age for offending being among 17 and 18.

The summary also claims much crime committed by young people is on people of the same age and goes on to say: "There is a clear need to protect young people from being victims of crime and from the potential of being encouraged into criminal behaviour."

Insp Cunningham said: "On paper it looks as though we are having trouble with youth crime but in reality we are no worse off than anyone else.

"The statistics speak for themselves.

"In a 12-month recorded period, there was an overall decrease in crime in Dartford town centre of 341.

"In the same period between 1999 and 2001 violence against the person fell from 244 reported cases in 1999 to 138 in 2001.

"These are significant drops which I hope will continue."

He added that there were a number of initiatives in crime prevention, and there was more to come.

Insp Cunningham said: "We are working on multi-agency schemes and in the near future we hope families will subscribe to voluntary acceptable behaviour contracts.

"This means children who could be tempted to commit crimes sign up voluntarily to a contract which has clauses stopping them from doing wrong.

"We are saying to children, You make a decision to do right or wrong, we can help you make the right choice'.

"What is important is to reassure people a lot of youth crime is committed on other people of the same age.

"We want to stop older people being too scared to leave their homes merely because they are frightened of youth crime."