Taggart (ITV1); The 12-Year-Old Cocaine Smuggler: This World (BBC2): THE Scots have a reputation for being mean, a view reinforced by the following comment in the latest episode of Glasgow-set police series, "That guy wouldn't even give you the steam off his p***".

It slips my mind who said it because, as usual, I was trying to follow the convoluted plot.

The "mudder" of a shipyard worker found DCI Matt Burke, whose permanent scowl surely means he's a relative of bodysnatching duo Burke and Hare, back on his old stomping ground.

He wasn't pleased to meet up again with Angus Ford, a retired policeman of the old hit-them-first-ask-questions-later school of hard knocks. "I knew your boss when he was a snotty-nosed kid," he informed Burke's colleagues.

Burke retaliated by noting that "there's a lot more these days than handing out beatings". This made matters worse, prompting Ford to reveal that Burke's father was an alcoholic. There's nothing like a get-together of old acquaintances is there?

Burke wasn't even averse to locking up the former policeman. Surely, it was suggested, he wouldn't send an ex-copper down. His reply, "And smile while I'm doing it" would indicate otherwise.

To be honest, this wasn't one of the best Taggart episodes. Even the murders - a stabbing and a suffocation - weren't as gruesome as they were in the old days. It all seems so run-of-the-mill now and Burke's fellow detectives, including reliable Jackie Reid, a bit dull.

Despite the title - The 12-Year-Old Cocaine Smuggler - the This World documentary was more than an exploitative expose of an unfortunate child. This was a sombre and sober account of the young cocaine smugglers of Bolivia.

Claudia was a 12-year-old caught carrying drugs - cocaine wrapped around her body and secured with sticky tape - on a bus. Friend Anita was also carrying cocaine but let off as she was only ten. Claudia was 12 and therefore accountable for her crime. She was sentenced to one year in a juvenile centre.

She was the youngest. Most inmates were between 14 and 16, and imprisoned for drug-smuggling, robbery, rape and murder. Hearing that she started to make new friends, you worried for her future in such company.

Her parents, who are separated and have both been to prison for drug-smuggling, could only argue about who was to blame. Her father accused his wife and her new boyfriend of being drug dealers, blaming them for Claudia's actions. Her mother said that wasn't true, that he only wanted her jailed so he didn't have to pay the child support he owed her.

A visit to the local women's prison was depressing. Cells are crammed with women and the children they've taken to jail with them. Over three-quarters of them are inside for smuggling cocaine.

Nothing is free in the prison. Women work, washing clothes for people on the outside, to pay rent for their cells and to send their children to school.

"Some call it the soap dish - easy to slip in, hard to climb out," was how the horrible situation was summed up.