The Bulger killers: was justice done?

[WannaBeWonderWoman]

Following on from previous thread which was filled.

What would have been the correct way to deal with these little boys who subjected a tiny two year old to protracted agony and unimaginable suffering then?

Interested to know what all the bleeding hearts on here believe should have happened? Whether they attended an adult court and were convicted of murder which they confessed to anyway, was this crueller to them than what they put that child through? They were well treated and even when they were serving their 'sentence' they were protected and given all they wanted (more than they would have got if they'd been in their own homes probably) and had all the help and therapy it was possible to give them. Did they suffer? You could actually argue that they benefitted from killing. They have to live with what they've done, yes, but if they did I find it hard to comprehend that Thompson especially (who came across as the leader in the interviews) can.

The Norwegian case which is often compared to this is nowhere similar IMO. The perpetrators were a similar age to their victim. They were 6 which is almost half the age V&T were and they wouldn't have been tried here anyway. Most importantly that crime was not premeditated or drawn out for hours like the many horrors inflicted on James.

He was the only victim here.

If you read up about the ongoing abuse and trauma that Robert Thompson sustained for the first ten years of his life inside his own dysfunctional and dangerous home it's truly heartbreaking. The effects that has on child, always feeling fear and having nobody to protect you must be very damaging, he was regularly found wandering the streets in the early hours of the mornings because he was too terrified to be in his house.

It's true that many children have sadly endured similar and not turned into killers, but make no mistake, he was also a victim.

Don't know much about JV family life though?

And honestly sleepingbunnies no. You don't know what you'd feel if your own child were to face the death penalty!
Thankfully this type of thinking is outdated & we don't do death penalties any more... because the majority see it as a method that doesn't solve crime & we have all matured out of this way of dealing with 'all the bad people out there' ( not any of us of course. But 'out there'....far more comfortable that way....)

Sleeping and presumably if, as you put it, you were responsible for raising your child to become an evil sadistic child abusing piece of shit, something very unpleasant should also happen to you?

Sundays - there ars probably as many articles out there suggesting RTs childhood wasn't as bad as made out either. It is kind of irrelevant though as something at some point made those boys that way whatever it was. It is very difficult to understand how at 10 they could actually do what they did, unthinkable really.

We don't have the death penalty - for anyone let alone children - or any idea of retributive justice as in doing the same to the perpetrator as was done to the victim - because as a society we are more civilised.

How would that make us any better than those who commit crimes in the first place? There are certain acts which are simply inhumane. Of course these must be punished but to recreate them or somehow determine "the same amount of suffering" as the punishment? It's an awful notion. You either decide something is beyond the pale and should never happen, or you declare that it's acceptable in certain circumstances. I don't believe killing or assaulting a person is acceptable in any circumstance, I wouldn't like to live in a country where it was the normal form of justice.

As for scoffing at the idea of understanding why something like this happens - do you not think it's important to try and prevent future potential Thomsons and Venables from acting? It is too simplistic to simply cry "evil" and shut a person away for life - that might prevent them from reoffending, but if you learn nothing, if you throw away the opportunity to understand what makes a person - not a monster, but a human, like any one of us, like any of the 700,000 born every day in Britain alone, any of whom might have the potential to kill. What makes somebody so broken that they would override or simply not have developed the natural instinct to protect rather than harm? If you choose to ignore this and simply class the killer as "inexplicable evil" then you ensure that their victim died for nothing more than a couple of bullies' entertainment.

Nothing can bring a murdered child back, not James, not Holly and Jessica, not any of the other children whose lives have been senselessly wasted, but if anything can come of these horrific cases it is that we must learn and identify everything that we can about the killers and why they might have acted as they did. It means that we have a slightly higher chance of preventing the same thing from happening to another child, another family.

Yes shatners. It should.

the system does not work because prisons are overcrowded, underfunded therefore fail to rehabilitate which is why there are repeat offenders.

Actually a lot of repeat offending isn't from failures with the prison system but in the probation and resettlement.

Many offenders are released from prison with no money, no job, no housing, no social skills and no support network so are basically just left to fend for themselves. Some reoffend because they have that kind of personality, some reoffend because they can't cope with being outside, some reoffend because they have serious issues that cause them to offend and some reoffend because they have no other option (eg they have no money so they shoplift food/clothes/things to sell for money, get caught and sent back to prison)

The entire system is overworked and overstretched but nobody wants to spend money on prisons and the probation service as everyone wants to write off offenders and would rather they get locked up forever and forgotten about ... which then increases the pressure put on the CJS services.

the other has been able to detach from what he did and live a normal life and look at himself everyday in the mirror

How do you know this, cronuts? Has he confided in you?

It is very difficult to understand how at 10 they could actually do what they did, unthinkable really

Broken, damaged and angry and incredibly immature at 10, void of any emotion and lacking any moral compass or the ability to feel compassion.

I don't believe at 10 they understood the severity of their actions, I wonder if they do now, if they look back with horror and shame or....if they look back and just wish they'd never been caught.

Clearly JV has plans to offend again, the pain he's caused is not enough for him.

On Questiontime now.

Being part of a society where we kill children would make us all as bad as them. Seeing footage of law abiding adults wanting to kill them with their bear hands was chilling, they were exhibiting the same rage and anger that was inside those two 10 year olds.

I think the parents and school has to take some responsibility. Letting ten year old boys play truent and doing nothing about it was criminal. Maybe if these boys weren’t allowed to roam the streets freely, this terrible event may never have taken place. Turning a blind eye unfortunately turned into a tragedy.

I find it absolutely ridiculous that they keep letting him out

They don't "keep letting him out". After his original release, he was convicted 10 years later; on the normal tariff, he should have been released after a year, but the parole board decided to keep him inside. He was then released in 2013. They've only let him out once. I'd say it's highly unlikely he'll be released again for several years, if ever.

Talking on QT about effective rehabilitation (and failures of) re JV.

Although bewilderingly it's the Tory MP claiming 'it worked'.

I actually don’t care what happened to the two boys to make them horrifically murder a toddler - they knew what they were doing. They gave up that right to sympathy when they were torturing a two year old.

James mother was right - they were never punished

Tory MP was trying to say 'well isn't it great we keep catching him, shows how carefully he's being watched'

Missing the whole point my that he keeps reoffending and that's the problem. No rehabilitation there, it hasn't worked.

jedi I used to wag school and had a shit up bringing yet never Murdered a child There is only two reasons that happened and it’s T&V

cronuts becAuse he is still alive ?? Could you really look at yourself every day if you had inflicted such torture to a toddler ?

Sundays Yes I think Claire Perry MP massively swerved the point there.

Strongvegetables, I do blame Venables and Thompson, don’t get me wrong. Many kids skip school and have shit childhoods. Many don’t abduct and murder kids.
What I’m saying is, if their school and parents actually did their job by supervising them in the first place then they wouldn’t have even been in the Strand that day. Again I blame the boys that did it.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/206851

If my child was murdered I would want justice, if me child had committed a crime I would want justice.
In this case I don't think anyone got justice. I think a huge barrier to justice was JV and RT's identities becoming public. If they had been tried as the children they were then their identities wouldn't have been released and I think that it would have left more options open in terms of how they were treated when they turned 18 I think everyone was back into a corner by their identities being common knowledge. Fear that they might be recognised if they went to adult prisons may have influenced the decision to release them at 18. I honestly think James's family and wider society would be better served by them remaining anonymous.

The petition wording:

"We want a Public Inquiry into the James Bulger murder case.
Throughout the conduct of the case there have been a number of issues that have been swept under the carpet. It's high time they were investigated. One mystery surrounding the murder of James Bulger case is why the "experts" insisted that Jon Venables was rehabilitated. The report of the Prison Service into an incident at Red Bank secure unit has not been published. It is time to examine all this."

Petition signed