If you see a young person in their early 20s driving a car in any Western city, you would not normally give them a second glance. However, in Christchurch, a city in New Zealand's South Island, people do look suspiciously at anyone under 2S in a car. What they are really looking for is a yellow sticker on the car windows. The reason: a new scheme (方案) is targeting car thefts, using a yellow sticker programme.

Half of all car thefts in the quiet city are committed by people under 25, police say, and each year vehicles worth 6.2 million disappear "for good". Police say that car theft is now so worrying that if a good idea"comes along" they'll use it. They say one has. It is called the Under-25 Scheme.

Because of the young age of car thieves in general, police invite owners whose cars are not normally driven by people under 25 to place a yellow triangle on front or back car windows. If police see anyone under 25 driving the car with a yellow triangle sticker on the window, they can stop the car and check the driver.

Police now say it has worked well enough over the last 18 months for them to test it nationally. Robin Scott, a Christchurch crime prevention officer says, "For the 13 months until last October we had 42 fewer cars stolen in Christchurch than the previous year一and only eight carrying stickers were stolen."

Meanwhile, youth advocates in Christchurch feel offended with it. Sam Fisher, a city communications employee, says,"If you divide people up like this, you' re going down the road to asking, 'Who are the thieves in the community? What is the color of their skin? Where do they live? What's their gender?" so you target young black males living in a suburb. That's the problem you end up with."

As for the police, the real issues seem to be finding a sponsor to pay for the whole sticker scheme.