Unhappy, unloved and out of control. British yob culture has been making headlines here for months, but now it’s even making headlines in the US, with the prestigious TIME magazine reporting on an epidemic of violence, crime and drunkenness that’s made the UK scared of its young.

But what would you do if it was your own son and daughter committing the crimes and terrorizing the community? Would your instinct be to protect your child and say nothing, or would you exert the ultimate in tough love measure and go to the police?

In Jail My Child: Tonight, Morland Sanders meets the parents who have turned their children into the police and speaks to a number of justice experts who debate whether jail can ever be in the best interests of a child.

Phillip Croker had to make this difficult decision in 2006 when he discovered that his son had seriously assaulted another teenager in Gloucester, leaving his victim unconscious.

Phillip tells Tonight: “About two o’clock in the morning, he was going down the road with a friend and there was a young guy who was leaving a pub or a club on his way home and (my son) hit him from behind to the ground, booted him, left boot prints on the kid’s face. I’ve seen some of the photos and they were shocking, absolutely shocking. He took the boy’s mobile phone, his wallet, his driving license and his money and left him unconscious on the ground.”

The day after the attack, his son tried to get the mobile phone he’d stolen from his victim unlocked at a shop which was run by a friend of his father’s. The shop keeper, however, had been alerted by the police to look out for the phone. He called Phillip Croker who felt he had no choice but to shop his child.

Phillip tells Tonight: “We both said that we’ve got to ring the police, that’s unacceptable at the end of the day. The person could’ve died. He wouldn’t have cared, he was off with the money.”

His son initially denied the attack and put tremendous pressure on his parents not to give evidence against him. But he later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in a young offender’s institution. According to the investigating officer on the case, his father’s evidence was crucial.

DI Mark Chicken tells Tonight: “The evidence of [his] father, and Lorraine, his mother, was the most compelling evidence we had in the case, absolutely crucial.”

“It’s not commonplace and it must be an extremely difficult call for a parent to make and I empathise with that…but realistically it’s behind those closed doors in a family unit that families will become aware that their children are offending.”

Those exceptional parents that do inform on their children often do so at the risk of losing their relationship.

Christine Peear has not seen or heard from her son in 18 months, following his release from a Bangkok prison.

She informed the police about her public schoolboy son, who had never been in trouble with the police before, when she discovered that he had been passing on illegal passports all over the world. James had confessed to his activities to his brother, who then passed the information onto Christine.

“I telephoned customs and excise, telephoned Nuneaton Police, Warwickshire Police and I telephoned North Wales Police and informed on James,” Christine recalls.

“And I did it because I love James so much, and always will,” she tells Tonight tearfully.

In the end her son managed to get out of the country before the police caught up with him. But six months later, he was caught in Thailand for the same crime and put into a rat-infested filthy Bangkok prison.

Christine confessed to her son in a letter that she had gone to the police and he initially said he would forgive her.

But their relationship has never really recovered and they have fallen out of contact.

Nevertheless, she says it was worth it: “He’s still alive. And when he was in prison there were the Spanish bombings, I’ve still got to be mindful of that. He wasn’t just going to Woolworths and taking a Mars Bar. I don’t want to over-emphasise the gravity of what he’s done, but it was really serious, James’s choice in life. And if I’ve made him think, when he came out of jail and those unspeakable conditions that he suffered, if I’ve made him think that, oh yes, there is a different life, a life that I can work hard, be a good honorable citizen… but I don’t know whether James’ will ever think like that.”

Monday 21 April 2008 8:00pm - 8:30pm on ITV1.