When is a child old enough to understand criminal behaviour and take responsibility for his or her actions? It is an impossible question because so much depends not just on age, but on the child. The Herald's revelations today that more than 200 offences were committed last year by children under the age of eight coincide with proposals to raise the age of criminal responsibility and will reignite that debate. The current age of eight in Scotland is one of the lowest in the world and distinctly out of line with the rest of Europe. It is time to reconsider a decision made in 1932.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, along with a number of children's charities, is now pressing for Scotland to raise the age. There have been previous proposals to raise it to 10 (the age in England and Wales), 12 (proposed by the Scottish Law Commission) or 14 (the UN's preference).

Those who argue in favour of keeping eight as the age of responsibility point out that hardly any young children face prosecution because they are likely to be referred to the children's hearings system, whether their behaviour is out of control or because they are in need of care and protection. It is clear that the children as young as three involved in vandalism and six- and seven-year-olds in possession of weapons revealed by the statistics are in urgent need of caring intervention. Retaining eight as the age of criminal responsibility, however, means that if children between the ages of eight and 12 are caught by the police, they must go through the recording procedures. That is disturbingly at odds with the central principle of Scotland's 40-year-old children's hearings system that when children commit a crime, it is an indication that something is seriously wrong with their upbringing and a welfare approach involving the whole family is required.

Young children caught committing offences are usually in the company of older children, who are likely to have persuaded - or coerced - the younger ones to take part. The question to be addressed is: what are their parents doing about it? Effective intervention with the family is more likely to deter children from future offending behaviour than branding them as criminals from the age of eight.

The argument that raising the age of responsibility to 12 would leave eight- to 12-year-olds vulnerable to exploitation by criminals deserves proper consideration. There is some evidence that drug dealers use children as couriers because they are unlikely to be prosecuted. Such children deserve protection and those who exploit them should be subject to additional penalties. By any standards, young children who are out on the streets taking part in criminal activity are neglected; they should not be prosecuted, but it may be that in some cases their parents should be.