Jon Venables jailed for 2 years

[Ewe]

2 years? It just doesn't seem long enough to me.

I find my usual liberal attitude really challenged by this situation. Downloading and distributing images of children as young as two and of eight year old girls being raped.

And he gets two sodding years and no doubt a new identity to boot when he leaves prison.

Butit isn't the individual Probation Officer who makes the final decison. He/she will have informed ALL concerned parties ( probation managers, Parole Board, police intell. about any other risky behaviours) and on the risk assessments made decisions would have been arrived at as to whether the behaviour warrants a recall to prison.
People ordinarily DO get cautioned for simple possession of drugs and if the fight he was involved in was evidentially strong enough he would have no doubt been charged which could have resulted in a recall. MAny street fights end up wit ha fixed penalty of £60 or so. The balance between risk and liberty can be a controversial one, more so for Venables case.

An issue will be that if his identity were to be revealed he would be killed. We don't do state execution any more, and this would have the aura of a state sanctioned death by mob. Whether this is acceptable in the circs. is another matter.

he goes around getting drunk and using drugs and revealing who he is, though, lord.

for his own safety perhaps it's best he just remain locked up.

i am really struggling with this having just read the guardians report.
here

i dont think we dealt with them in the right way back in 93. i wonder how the other one is doing. i wonder if rehabilitation was ever a possibility. and i wonder how awful their lives must have been prior to the actual offence itself when they were 10. i wonder how much support they got on leaving a life which was completely institionalised. i wonder if this is now a lost cause.

and i feel complete and utter sympathy for denise fergus.

you might be right expat IF he was being dangerous to himself. This is an incredibly unusual case where where children kill a child, and what that means for their future supervision wit han understandably baying public ( or at least a section of it) Agencies are making it up as they go along as there is no blue print for this sort of stuff. Errors will be made and learned from.

I think the other one is doing ok, I am sure I recall reading an article (or maybe from the old thread on here) saying he is now living abroad with his boyfriend?

Thanks for that information Pan, do you know how often they have to see a probation officer? How monitored are they? A large part of me feels that there is never going to be enough in the community monitoring to handle someone like this.

I agree with Vic, his issues must incredibly complex, not just those from his very damaging early years but also those from years of being in secure units. I suspect a lost cause too.

Contact levels will vary Ewe, dependent on risks as presented at the time. Initially licencees are ocasionally sick of the sight of probation officers, whilst also relying heavily on their support and encouragement. Staf are required to be highly skilled in working with people in difficult circumstances.

There will be regualr home visits, contacts with anyone whom he has regular contact with, liaison with police for any intelligence coming to light.
As time goes by and the ability to self-manage rises then supervision becomes less intense, though lifer remain on licence til death.

And incidentally with this governments commitment to savage the public sector funding levels ( probation I understand face a 25% reduction in the next 2 years when staffing is already down to the bare bones) the effective management of risks to the public will be further compromised.
It's not unlike the position of children and families services where the staffing levels and caseloads balance is totally messed, leaving to gaps where resources not meeting need will produce terrible consequences for the client group and the public.

His strong scouse accent ? How do you know he has one, he's supposed to have been out of Liverpool for 16 years.
And as for him being killed, the Daily Mail published photo's of Stephen Lawrence's killers and they are all alive and well today and still not brought to justice.

At the point of leaving prison he will still ahve had one. IT's very difficult to remove, if you wished to that is.. Moving to Naarich in Norfolk, for eg, he would have stuck out. Also what little support he had to assist in resettling, i.e. family will still be in Liverpool. Cheshire seems a good choice for all of these reasons and there is no suggestion he breach his licence by going to Liverpool.

The Lawrence murderers are a good point to raise. I don't know how they have survived, but you can be sure Venables wouldn't last very long if his id were to become public knowledge.

There's no suggestion he went to Liverpool ??? You are joking aren't you, he was working in a nightclub in Matthew Street, boasting about who he was.

Really?? Hadn't read that anywhere. Not a wise thing to do in the circs.

I'm not sure who'd be prepared to go to prison for killing these days tbh, maybe at the time when James was found if the killers had been an adult but now people are outraged from behind their newspapers.
I'd say most people just want him to stay in prison.

oh there's lots of unsolved murders in this country. People commit suicide in prison when 'under watch', 1,000 people have died in police custody and no-one has been charged.

I wouldn't envisge a difficulty in having him done in with no-one arrested.

Pan, you are right about the risks posed by savage government cuts. But the ministers don't care. They just want to award fat contracts to their pals in the private sector. The money will go to companies like crapita who are no doubt even now dreaming up their own rubbish version of a probation service.

I agree with VicarinaTutu's post at 12:40:22 (Sat 24-Jul-10).

I also think that Venables and Thompson should not have been tried in an adult court. And I don't think that they should ever have been named.

I realise that this is an unpopular view.

We're talking about a dangerous paedophile who gets sexual gratification from the torture of small children. He was dangerous at age ten and he's dangerous now. Trying Venables in an adult court and naming him did not turn him into a paedophile.

And two years is a joke. When he gets out, I hope he doesn't end up living next door to me. I wouldn't want him to get hold of one of my kids.

Princess - agree with you entirely about trying them in an adult court. Horrible. What they did was appalling, but nothing was achieved by putting little boys, even boys who had committed a terrible crime, through an adult court. On the news, they interviewed one man who had thumped the prison van at the time - he was actually proud of what he'd done, the stupid, stupid man.

The justice system is supposed to be a hallmark of civilisation, not a rallying point for the lynch mob.

i agree. they were children. they should have been tried as such.

i am not excusing in any way the crimes of which he has now been sentenced for

but what a shit shit shit 27 years. the first 10 must have been unimaginable horror to enable and produce a child who could murder and torture another child.

the next 10 were spent in prison. institutionalised. having no sense of the outside world or how to live in it.

and then they release him. he cannot form a relationship. he must live in constant fear of being found out. i feel he was a ticking time bomb.
he was never dealt with in the right was from day one. why dont we put money in BEFORE the kids get to the point where they are murderous little bastards?

Agree with Ewe's OP - put so perfectly that I'm not going to try adding anything less articulate.

Again I am agreeing with VicarInaTuTu.

As Vicar says, please do not think that this is in any way a call to excuse Venables or his dreadful crimes.

Does anyone else remember Mary Bell? In 1968, at the age of 10/11, she killed two little boys. She spent 12 years in prison, but in the 30 years since she was released she has (as far as I know) committed no other offence - not even incurred a parking ticket. Very different from Venables in that respect, of course - but perhaps evidence that some children who have been killers (rare as that is) can go on to lead ordinary lives?

the next 10 were spent in prison. institutionalised. having no sense of the outside world or how to live in it

What apart from being taken on holidays, shopping at the Trafford centre and to see Manchester United play years before their release amongst no doubt other things ?

He is obviously a very fucked up individual but the damage was done at 10 years old and the people that were really responsible for James death were John's parents and yet they were allowed to stay in contact and also enjoyed the benefits of JV's rehabilitation, the nice little trips.
It was all very badly handled and that no doubt is why James mum cannot let it go.

The Mary Bell case is also a good one because I would imagine in 1968 she was sent to something similar to Borstal not wrapped in cotton wool, bought an ice cream and told it's not her fault. Clearly whatever they did with her in the 1960's worked.

If I remember rightly, long before these boys were released from prison, psychologists/criminologists predicted that one of the boys was more likely to be rehabilitated than the other and in my memory, it was Thompson.

has anyone heard anything of Thompson since his release?

I suspect he wouldn't have been allowed to work as a bouncer anywhere. Aren't they subject to CRB checks?