LESS than a decade ago, asking if Glasgow could run out of thugs would have sounded stupid.

To many ears, it still might.

Because this city has produced a conveyer belt of young men, brutalised by gangfighting, and ready to try and make men of themselves in organised crime.

Now senior police officers hope recent dramatic declines in youth offending – and the city's internationally recognised work to wean youngsters out of gang fighting – will bring dividends in the war on organised crime.

Why? Because gangsters may soon struggle to recruit enforcers schooled in the violence of territorial gangs and Glasgow's traditional booze and blades culture.

Detective Chief Superintendent John Cuddihy leads Strathclyde Police's Major Crime and Counter-Terrorism Investigation Unit. His job is to catch so-called "Level 3 criminals" – the Mr Bigs.

But he is also watching youth crime work – and praising charities working with troubled and troubling teenagers.

Mr Cuddihy said: "The voluntary sector plays a fantastic and extremely important part here.

"We have to take these potential footsoldiers at 14 and 15 out of that environment where they will be seduced by serious organised crime.

"Action For Children, for example, is doing great work with the 14 and 15-year-olds that would be most vulnerable and diverting them into other activities."

The Evening Times revealed this week that violent offending by under-16s was down 48% over the last five years.

The number of youngsters reported to the Children's Hearings System for offending is down even further, by three-quarters to a total of 808, most for one or two minor infringements.

Even more dramatically, the number of under-16s caught carrying a knife has fallen 75% across west Scotland over the last six years.

Organised criminals need to recruit the kind of men who would not flinch from carrying or using a knife, for example. Right now there are plenty of them. But five years fron now?

Mr Cuddihy added: "We are tackling serious and organised crime at the higher echelons. Community cops are having an absolute impact in their communities. Other partners are helping us with community intelligence.

"But the voluntary sector is also having an impact by diverting kids away and giving them a focus and a purpose in life, a sense that they can contribute to society.

"Ultimately, that means they are not getting involved in other chaotic stuff, in setting a fire or hanging about the street corner.

"In the long term it will bring a 'feelgood factor' in the community. Kids want to contribute to society. We can give them an alternative."

Police chiefs have long bemoaned the prestige and power of organised criminals in some of Glasgow's most deprived communities.

But worse: such men, and sometimes women, can become role models.

"They are the ones with the flash Audis," said one cop. "They are the ones who get respect. Well, they won't get so much respect if we take their Audi off them."

The police have been seizing the cars of criminals and then flaunting them.

Partly this is aimed at young people – to take gangsters down a peg or two in the public eye.

But Mr Cuddihy and his Strathclyde colleagues, together with the Crown Office, have increasingly been using the Proceeds Of Crime legislation to target gangsters, whether they have been convicted in a court or not.

Such money ends up being ploughed into schemes such as Cash For Communities, where it is used to fund some of the sporting facilities helping to tackle youth crime.

That appeals to Mr Cuddihy. "The very people who should pay for it are the very people who suck the life out of communities."

Those who tackle organised crime have historically measured their success in seizures of drugs. Mr Cuddihy, however, prefers to see the decline of overall crime – the kind of figures reported in Crime On Your Street over the last week or two – as his big target.

Cuddihy said: "There is no question there is a relationship in reducing violence and reducing organised crime.

"If you can reduce criminality across the board that is telling you there is a reduction in demand for the products and services of organised crime.

"At times we measure success differently: How much money do you remove from serious and organised crime groups? How many drugs do you take from them?

"For me, it's got to be about a reduction in overall crime:

l "Are there fewer victims?

l "Did we make a difference in a community?

l "Have we made it safer? Have we kept the children safe?

l "Is there public confidence police are doing the right thing?

l "Are people saying, 'I don't fear I shall be a victim of crime?' or 'I don't fear my child will be a seduced by organised crime'?"

Officers fighting organised crime used to think of themselves as an elite.

Now they see beat bobbies – who are collecting more information than for years now they are walking or cycling the streets rather than patrolling in cars – as key allies.

But Mr Cuddihy said recent success against organised criminals – the gangsters who run Glasgow's drugs, prostitution and extortion rackets – was down to the public

He said: "Serious and organised crime is like a scourge on our society. It is like a cancer. If we don't get a treatment for it, it will destroy our communities.

"But it is our communities that are providing the medicine, the information we need to remove serious and organised crime.

"Any bit of information anybody has, however small, will contribute to a bigger picture. It will give us that piece of the jigsaw we need.

"We are making a difference, but we can only continue to do so with the help of the community."

Crime at a glance

Gangland London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham are rife with guns – but not Glasgow.

Firearms offences in Glasgow – most of them involving air weapons – continue to fall.

In 2011-12 there were 15 recorded cases of someone possessing a firearm with intent, one of the Group 1 most serious violent offences. The year before it was 16, but both totals were way down from 62 in 2006-2007, when the Evening Times began its Crime On Your Street series.

There were 12 cases of the less serious offence of "reckless conduct with a firearm" in 2011-12, down from 56 in 2006-2007.