20 years ago today James Bulger was murdered
Except that by all accounts Thompson may well have been reformed. I guess you never know until you're proved wrong, but if he lives the rest of his life offence free then he was reformed.
What do you do if you think they'll never be reformed? Well some people get whole life sentences - Criegan will get one. And a parole board decides (effectively) whether a lifer has been reformed - although they never say never. Venables is preparing for another parole hearing I believe.
The way the law sees it is that most people have the capacity to reform, and the younger someone is the more chance they have, even where the offences are very bad. The problem here is that the offences are just so twisted.
Thompson will never be reformed. What he did is unimaginable. i am not aware of any adults committing the torture that he did. There is no way that he could have got that idea for what he did while at home. My guess is that Thompson is back inside for some serious crime and the press are not allowed to disclose details otherwise there will be public outcry.
There are actually 46 lifers in prison for whom never means never. Rose West is the only female for whom life means life. Venebles just lost his parole hearing, thank goodness.
Except that by all accounts Thompson may well have been reformed. I guess you never know until you're proved wrong, but if he lives the rest of his life offence free then he was reformed.
What do you do if you think they'll never be reformed? Well some people get whole life sentences - Criegan will get one. And a parole board decides (effectively) whether a lifer has been reformed - although they never say never. Venables is preparing for another parole hearing I believe.
The way the law sees it is that most people have the capacity to reform, and the younger someone is the more chance they have, even where the offences are very bad. The problem here is that the offences are just so twisted.
Thompson will never be reformed. What he did is unimaginable. i am not aware of any adults committing the torture that he did.
Perhaps not identical, but there all too many examples of torture and torture murders and murders of children with horrific injuries.
And this is the basis for your conclusion he is not reformed? It's silly guesswork on your part. I'm not aware of any legal basis for restricting such information, certainly not a catchall 'there'll be a public outcry' basis. They told us about Venables.
Yes, I said a judge had the option for whole life terms. Obviously they never have parole boards considering release. But anyone else who passes their minimum term has the right to apply to a parole board. The board will never say 'you can't be reformed', merely that 'at this time we consider you present a risk to the public and therefore will not be released'.
Really? Where would I find that? The latest news I can see is Bulger's mother wanting to speak at the hearing.
It wouldn't matter whether you could be swayed or not. The age of criminal responsibility in this country is 10. We are one of the lowest. Thompson and venables could not have been prosecuted in Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia etc.
Well it's not so often I think we're right compared to other countries because all too often my perception is we're too soft, but on this occasion, we're right and they're wrong. I only know what was officially released by the authorities, and going by what a couple of people have said here I don't know half of it. But even going off my myopic 'sanitized' understanding of what went on, you can't do what they did and not know that it's wrong. You just can't. At ten years old, your mind has to be in a very dark place to start with to even come up with some of the tortures they inflicted on the lad. I truly believe you can't reform that.
It wouldn't matter whether you could be swayed or not. The age of criminal responsibility in this country is 10. We are one of the lowest. Thompson and venables could not have been prosecuted in Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia etc.
Well it's not so often I think we're right compared to other countries because all too often my perception is we're too soft, but on this occasion, we're right and they're wrong. I only know what was officially released by the authorities, and going by what a couple of people have said here I don't know half of it. But even going off my myopic 'sanitized' understanding of what went on, you can't do what they did and not know that it's wrong. You just can't. At ten years old, your mind has to be in a very dark place to start with to even come up with some of the tortures they inflicted on the lad. I truly believe you can't reform that.
I'm not arguing that they didn't know what they were doing was wrong. I think most children know that a fair bit younger than 10. But there's definitely a debate as to how children of this sort of age should be dealt with.
I agree with you their minds must have been in a very dark place, but there is a cause for that, either biological or upbringing or a combination of the two. If it is biological then treatment may help, or they need to remain in hospital. If down to upbringing, then some people can never recover, but some can. These things are not clear cut. They can't be decided just on what a person did, but on all the details of the person, something none of us knows.
No need for speculation and not knowing the half of it, there's a full account on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger It's horrific and I don't wish to minimise it, but I've read of worse than this, especially if you take into account there is no proven sexual element and the tying to the tracks was an attempted coverup rather than part of the torture. (Read up on the Snowtown murders and watch the grotesque but brilliant film if you want to know about truly twisted.)
I'll be flamed for it, but so many of these murders enter the public consciousness not because of the crime itself but because of other reasons: cute looking kid (Bulger, Soham, Maddie), something about the murderers (extreme youth here, the caretaker in Soham). With Bulger there was also the outrage at all the members of the public who had ignored the three of them.
I'm not arguing that they didn't know what they were doing was wrong.
Just reading the wiki entry a bit further, I had forgotten that 'doli incapax' still applied, a rebuttable presumption that under 14s were not criminally responsible. So there was a finding that they did know right from wrong.
I'm not sure what I think Ben..
Maybe they had a horrific childhood like Mary Bell (mentioned earlier) who had been used as a sex-slave from four years old before she strangled her first victim at twelve, but I don't recall any revalations like that in the press above and beyond the stories which said they'd watched Childs Play 3. But I'd say that some people could be exposed to that kind of horror and abuse at home and while it might screw their minds in many ways (maybe it would even drive them to attempted suicide) it wouldn't automatically turn them into scheming killers.The desire to torture and kill has got to be there to start with.
Really? Where would I find that? The latest news I can see is Bulger's mother wanting to speak at the hearing.
Just read the full article and he didn't. That's Sky news for you. Something happened today and under the heading it said he had lost his parole bid. In full, it said he lost his parole bid in 2011. My bad.
The rest is always judgemental. The looney left will blame society and let them go. Those to the right of Genghis Khan will want to lock him up and throw away the key. Somewhere in the middle will prevail.
Agre with this.
Now, this could get a little...I'm not sure of th eword...But I'll just say that as far as I know non eof th edetails are secret now. They can all, I believe, be found in such publications as Morrison's excellent As If.
The thing with Bell is, had you asked her - as I believe they did - at the age of 10, if she knew her actions were wrong, what do you expect her to say? But, bearing in mind her earlier experiences, she would probbaly have sai something different (the adult Bell would agree I think) if you asked her if she knew that the children would be gone forever, and what that meant.
Did Venables and Thompson know killing was wrong? Almost certainly. Indeed that will have been established to the court's satisfaction. Did they fully understand all the implications of thier actions? Maybe...Did they take Bulger, with malice aforethought, to kill him? I suspect not, but have no way of knowing, unless there's something I've forgotten. Yes, thay had chances to end the situaton, but so did many others much older than them, who may reasonably have infered that all was not well, for want of a more eloquent phrase.
Bulger's killers are demons who shall hopefully rot in hell. I remain frustrated that a tiny proportion of my taxes are paying for those two creatures to live and breathe.
Hasn't one of them been released?
One of my friends attended the call to this crime. A lot of the details were withheld because they were just too sickening. They should never be released. Pure evil.
You're spot on. My mate worked for the Police at the time and he knew in greater detail the true nature of what happened....... We're talking much, much worse than the widely reported "beaten to death"....... Knowing what I know, I can't see why they should have been released at all....
Had they been 5 or 6, I could maybe be swayed by the too young to know right from wrong, but not at 10 years old.
It wouldn't matter whether you could be swayed or not. The age of criminal responsibility in this country is 10. We are one of the lowest. Thompson and venables could not have been prosecuted in Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia etc.
I didn't mean legally, I was talking about my own personal feelings on the matter.
Bulger's killers are demons who shall hopefully rot in hell. I remain frustrated that a tiny proportion of my taxes are paying for those two creatures to live and breathe.
Hasn't one of them been released?
One of my friends attended the call to this crime. A lot of the details were withheld because they were just too sickening. They should never be released. Pure evil.
You're spot on. My mate worked for the Police at the time and he knew in greater detail the true nature of what happened....... We're talking much, much worse than the widely reported "beaten to death"....... Knowing what I know, I can't see why they should have been released at all....
Had they been 5 or 6, I could maybe be swayed by the too young to know right from wrong, but not at 10 years old.
It wouldn't matter whether you could be swayed or not. The age of criminal responsibility in this country is 10. We are one of the lowest. Thompson and venables could not have been prosecuted in Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia etc.
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