YES says Paul McKeever, chairman of trade union, the Police Federation in England and Wales

This idea should certainly be given some very serious consideration. Most people are convinced that where young- sters are committing anti-social acts, there has to be an immediate response for them to take notice.

At the moment, police dealing with anti-social teenagers have to go through the process of getting an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Asbo) imposed.

This is granted in the magistrates' courts and it can be days or weeks before the order is made. By this time it is often too late – the heat has gone from the offence. This recognises that the sanctions that are being imposed are not working.

It is trying to resolve the disconnection between the offence and the punishment by allowing police to say "we are going to do something immediately".

Asbos don't make an effective connection between the act and the penalty.

With young people we need something more immediate.

I am sure that many communities would welcome the curfews. Many would support it as the modern-day equivalent of the old-fashioned policeman's "clip around the ear".

It would send out the message that we are serious that the criminal justice system has the power to impose immediate sanctions for bad behaviour and that "no" will mean "no".At the moment, "no" is negotiable.

There is work to be done on the idea: what happens if young people break the terms of their grounding?

There have to be effective sanctions against breaching a curfew. It would require co-operation with parents.

At present, reoffending rates stand at 70 per cent. The sanctions imposed are not effective.

The police are doing their job of detecting offenders and crime – it's what happens afterwards that fails the public.

We need innovative ideas that make a difference.

It is the police's right to intervene in these cases.

If parents have abnegated responsibility and are not controlling their children, then police or social workers have to step in. Asbos have become almost a badge of honour among certain groups of young people.

With simple curfews, you wouldn't get that same badge. I'd hope it would be a useful deterrent against young people carrying out anti-social behaviour.

At the moment, this is just one idea in the pot.

Curfews would not replace Asbos, and substantive offences would still be dealt with at a different level in the criminal justice system – if people's property was being damaged, for example.

Police officers are there to keep the peace.

At the moment, their work is hampered by excessive bureaucracy and legislation needed to secure a penalty.

When youngsters breach the peace, we should be able to address the incident straight away.

NO says MP Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary

The idea proposed by the Conservatives for "grounding orders" tries to hit a worthy objective – dealing quickly and informally with low-level disorder by youngsters – but we, the Liberal Democrats, think there are better and less time-consuming ways of achieving the goal.

Since 1997, the Government has created numerous measures to tackle anti-social behaviour, notably the Asbo. Police also have at their disposal dispersal orders, parenting orders, local child curfew schemes, reparation orders, action-plan orders, alcohol disorder zones and penalty notices for disorder. The list goes on.

Several of these measures have never been used by the police. Child curfew orders and alcohol disorder zones, for example, have been shunned by local authorities. Those that have been employed, such as Asbos and penalty notices for disorder, are routinely ignored by the offenders.

Paul McKeever is right that the response to anti-social behaviour has to be immediate if it is to work. The problem with all of these measures, including the Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling's grounding order, is that they are too slow and require too much police manpower to be effective.

Asbos can take a long time to put into place. But Mr Grayling's scheme, too, will require a magistrates' court to grant the powers. Supervision of someone under an Asbo would need to be round the clock to ensure adherence, but ensuring that a grounding order was not broken would also require a massive commitment of police time.

The Conservatives talk tough on anti-social behaviour, but when it comes to real substance, their ideas look just like Labour's over the last 12 years.

Asbos and penalty notices are ignored because they are extremely difficult to police. Grayling's grounding orders would be ignored for the same reason. The only consequence of creating crimes that cannot be policed is to bring our police service into disrepute, and so make their job even more difficult.

A better approach would be measures that give the police real power to enforce punishment quickly, to deliver reparations to the community, and to avoid unnecessarily criminalising young people for minor misdemeanours. For example, those found spraying graffiti or vandalising property could be issued with a penalty notice to clear it up within a clear time limit. This could then be checked at a later date and, unlike grounding orders, would not require constant police supervision for weeks on end.

The problem with these Conservative proposals is that they sound tough, but are less practical than they look.

We need to tackle anti-social behaviour urgently, but we should not serve up reheated leftovers from the Blairite heyday. We need a radical change, and a new approach to youth offending that would really work.