The child who confessed should get a reduced sentence?

He'll be out by the time he's in his thirties and some poor person will look at him the wrong way in a pub or drive too slowly in front of him or do something else that winds him up and then he'll knife them too.

Interesting that a previous thread by OP is about feral teen girls in a village and how afraid she is for her parents safety...

OP is a wind-up merchant. Just ignore.

I’ve just been reading the trial updates on this. Such a horrendous, horrific case. My heart absolutely goes out to the families of the two boys murdered. What on earth is happening in our society ☹️ it’s a frightening place.

I don’t care if prison rehabilitates them or not. They are dangerous scum that deserve to be locked up for their natural life.

It shouldn’t do. But the poster I was quoting seems to be of the opinion that they should get an easier time of it because they’re poor and have shit parents 🙄

Aside from the obvious point that they should have the bloody book thrown at them and their background isn’t an excuse, it’s bloody outrageous that she’s automatically assuming that they must be from a deprived and neglected background simply because of the nature of their crime. What happens if they turn out to have nice, attentive parents? Should they get a longer sentence because they should have known better?

@ElatedShark

One of the boys killed was a family friends family member.

Each and every one of those 5 should rot in hell! Life in prison isn't life - The youngest will be out before he's 30 and can live his life. The 2 killed have had their lives snatched away.
He was big enough to go out with a weapon and harm someone enough to kill them so, he absolutely should do time.

The system needs to change and actually give life for a life!!!

Do we know the economic background of the killers Does it matter?

Do we know the economic background of the killers? Have their parents been identified and outed as being shit? Or are you working on the basis that middle class boys from nice, well off families couldn’t possibly do something like this?Because if that’s the case, and we’re talking about indulging monstrous tendencies from an armchair, I suggest you look a little closer to home.

They might be evil, or they might be broken, never having had parents who taught them empathy. Either way, it’s irrelevant. They did something unforgivable. They need to be punished and the public need to be protected from them, so they don’t decide that someone else needs to die because they looked at them sideways, or because they edged in front of them in the bus queue. What nobody needs is some dozy liberal, who would rather live in a tent than near a council estate, making excuses for them.

And I suppose it’s possible that the youngest has had an attack of conscience which has made him admit to killing a defenceless teenager. I’d be more inclined to think he had a lawyer who pointed out the evidence against him, told him he didn’t stand a chance of getting away with it and that he might get a lesser sentence if he admitted to it.

The emotive use of the word 'child' on MN is crazy, it may fit a legal definition but if they can involve themselves in such horrifying murder they can take the consequences like an adult. Admitting their crime in the hope of getting a soppy judge who cares more about them than about their victims shouldn't work in their favour.

Well said @Beezknees .
Lots of children grow up with addicted parents- one who saw their parent beaten by dealers, and all the squalor that goes along with it.. and they still become useful, functioning members of society.

But there are aways people who seek to excuse these monsters- because that is what they are.

No child with a conscience could murder another so callously.

So much this. Ridiculous thread.

Agreed. I hope none of the grieving families of the murder VICTIMS have to see people thinking anyone should get a nicer punishment.

OP is clearly related to the killer/s.

How do people even get machetes? They should be banned, anyone caught with one should go to jail, there is simply no need for such a weapon.

Hope all sentenced rot in jail for life.

No. I grew up in poverty and deprivation with a drug addicted father who was often in prison and a mother with severe depression who couldn't even get out of bed at times. I did not go out killing people with machetes. I hate when "deprivation" is blamed for this sort of thing, it's a scapegoat.

IMO.

The age that people (men) are, if disposed to violence, violent- is 13/4 to late 30s.

Keep the rest of us safe til these 'children' are 40, minimum.

It's interesting that you refer to the completely innocent 15 and 16 year old victims as young men, and the youngest of the 5 people who stabbed and hacked them to death with 16-inch machetes (also 15) as a terrified child.

Where do they get these machetes from?

@Fairyliz 100% agree!

No, they should all get the maximum sentence.
If we want to actually stop all forms of male violence we need to hold both the boys/men and their parents to account. If the parents of males actually parented their sons in the same way girls are parented than this whole "boys will be boys" and "boys are easier to raise" nonsense would stop and the crime statistics would drop.

The news article states that he only pleaded guilty to 1 murder not to both so I am not sure if the sentence would be reduced in this instance.

Many would agree with you.
Complete waste of air.

Life in jail should mean life.
{being as Pierrepoint is no more re death penalty}

When they get out of jail, they are likely to end up battering their partners, their children , who will likely end up violent and dysfunctional- and will generally be a net loss to society.

This case really upset me. Two young lads, not much older than my own, murdered just like that. Their lives snuffed out because of a bunch of vengeful psychopaths. I can't imagine what their families are going through and my heart goes out to them. Regardless if the youngest perpetrator gets a lesser sentence, he's young enough that he will be able to restart his life at some point and experience all the things those two lads are going to miss. Sickening.

Absolutely agree. I've been saying this for years

Send their parents to prison too!