I don’t know much about children’s hearings in Scotland, but I suspect nobody does, as they go about quietly and out of public view, processing troubled young people aged between 12 and 16.

It’s not all about youngsters hellbent on building a criminal record portfolio because they also look at a lot of social work-style cases in need of support.

I suppose they do wonderful work dragging problem children back onto the straight and narrow without going to court, but I’m not sure.

Trouble is, nobody really knows.

It’s all done under a cloak of secrecy because the total privacy of the children involved is sacrosanct.

Quite right – but only up to a point.

I thought about that awful stabbing of a young female pupil by another girl at Hazlehead Academy in Aberdeen.

Unfortunately, there was an inconclusive public outcome, as the case was shunted off into a black hole where children’s hearings are held – never to be heard of again publicly unless it leaks out unofficially.

So we’ll never know what happened to the perpetrator.

Is this right? Leaving unanswered questions of deep public interest flapping in the wind?

You might well agree to keeping the media (and, therefore, the public) in complete darkness, as access to children’s........

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