THE CCTV footage we carry on our website today is grainy, but clear enough. It shows York city centre, in the early hours of the morning.

Three well-dressed but obviously drunk young men are walking along a street, gleefully tipping rubbish bins over and throwing black bin bags about.

A police van draws up, and after a stern talking to the three are told to pick up all the rubbish they have scattered everywhere. You can imagine how ashamed they might feel if they were forced to watch their behaviour back when sober.

Well, that is exactly the strategy council bosses are using to try to shame those arrested for public drunkenness into behaving better.

Under a programme launched last June, some of the drunks arrested in York are referred to a special alcohol diversion programme run by the city council and Safer York Partnership.

There, they are made to watch pixelated CCTV footage of drunks behaving badly in the city centre.

The aim: to make them see themselves as others see them when they’re drunk.

Alcohol specialists then work with them to look at the causes of their drinking – and at the links between alcohol and criminal or antisocial behaviour.

“We believe that by educating people about the antisocial effect of their drinking and its possible consequences, we can encourage them to drink responsibly,” said Jane Mowatt of Safer York.

This is a great idea, one which has echoes of sending speeding drivers on speed awareness courses.

Hopefully, forcing those who have been arrested for drunken behaviour to see what they look like when they’ve had too much to drink might just make some of them take a long, hard look at their relationship with booze. We’d all benefit from that.