Guest vocals: Kathleen Marshall

Oliver Twist got off lightly, apparently. "The unruly hoodlum should have been tried, found guilty and punished. He was a criminal. Forced into theft and housebreaking by Fagin, the deprivations of his childhood were irrelevant. This mini yob should have been compelled to take full responsibility for his actions. It is not good enough to blame society. If we are going to get tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime, we need to get tough on the Oliver Twists of the 21st century."

Is that the view of Scottish society today? You would think so if you read the media reports this past week lauding tougher measures on youth crime and pointing a finger at four-year-old housebreakers and five-year-old shoplifters. Scottish law does not allow children under eight to be prosecuted - bizarrely, some media reports seem to be questioning this exemption. Where will it all end? Will there be crèches for under-fives due to appear before the court? Will babies be charged with breach of the peace for crying?

Scotland is already shamed by having one of the youngest ages of criminal responsibility in the world. The government's defence is that very few children are prosecuted because of the diversion to the children's hearing system. But nevertheless our system contemplates putting an eight-year-old in front of an adult court for serious crimes.

The philosophy behind the children's hearing system is that crime is a sign something has gone wrong with the child's upbringing. That is why Scottish law does not usually criminalise the child but compels the parents to attend the hearing with the child to look at the causes and identify a way forward. It is all about parental responsibility.

In 1832, when Oliver Twist author Charles Dickens was just 20, a leading Scottish lawyer wrote a book called Principles Of The Criminal Law Of Scotland. Sir Archibald Alison started with a reference to, "The vast increase in juvenile delinquency, arising from the corrupted manners, temptation to vice and incessant drunkenness of a large proportion of the lower orders".

But he stuck to the ancient wisdom of countless generations and societies: "Children under seven years of age are held to be incapable of crime, and not the object of punishment." Do we want to be tougher on crime than Dickens's generation?