pho said: “There’s thousands of children who haven’t committed atrocities and yet still starve, having less opportunity than these two. I guess they provide a focus. Who needs love more than two 10 year olds, so abused and deprived that they tortured and murdered a 2 year old?”
Fits in well with this quote from his second link: “It’s an irony that the welfare state only moved to rescue Robert and Jon after they’d committed murder.” The best way to get attention is to fuck up. Having said that, however, it still makes my heart hurt to think of little James. He can’t even have known what was happening.
cazzle said: “They hoped the police would think that Jamie was killed by the train - and I think that intially this was the case, until the autopsy revealed that the train hit the small body AFTER death.”
That may have made a difference in the courts, but either way of dying would have been horrible. In fact, this way might have been marginally less terrible. Oh, why am I thinking about it.
Primaflora said: “However if one believes in rehabilitation and redemption (which I do) then what is justice for these boys? The media found Parker and Hulme without too much bother (was anyone creeped out by Juliet Hulme being Anne Perry the novelist?)”
I don’t get the connection. When you say “too much bother”, do you mean it wasn’t hard to find them as adults? Or that there wasn’t much of a public outcry?
mersavets said: “I saw Ruddock interviewed on Meet the Press on Sunday. When he was pressed to rule out allowing the boys into Australia he refused…He then went on to make a blanket statement saying that anybody with serious convictions had little chance of getting in.”
Had to do a search to find out that Ruddock is your Immigrations Minister. You know, I like the sound of that statement. Was a time when anyone the British didn’t want to deal with, they chucked down to you guys. Now that you’ve built yourselves into a repectable country, you’re saying “Keep your problems in your own hemisphere.” Right on!
Barbarian said: “Why not? How long did it take you to learn proper moral behaviour? In my book, the 8 years they’ve been in jail and therapy since they’ve committed the crime is at least equal to the time when their minds started to form.”
Everyone goes through a lot more changes between 10 and 18 than they do between 30 and 38, or even 20 and 28. In a structured environment, they were probably at least prevented from repeating the same patterns that they would have if they’d kept doing smaller crimes that didn’t get them sent to prison.
kabbes said: “If that rehabilitation is going to stand even a chance of succeeding, then they have to be released now, before they get put into jail and become hardened criminals. If we keep them locked up for another 10 years, then all we’ll accomplish is the successful release of a couple of 28-year olds who definitely won’t be able to cope in society. What’s the point in that?”
Well said. cazzle said eight years is a joke. But as I stated above, these eight years; the ones between childhood and adulthood, are a gift they can never get back. Jamie will never play sports or go to parties or go out with girls. These two didn’t either, and probably never will. At least they’re being denied something they don’t deserve to have*.
Also, as Primaflora pointed out, they were convicted as minors, and can’t continue to be incarcerated as adults. I think there have been cases, though, where minors have been retried at age 18, and given new convictions. Maybe that’s only in the US.
Ballybay said: “Education and counseling are fine, but did they really frickin’ deserve football tickets? Whitewater rafting?”
Are you serious? That knocks out my earlier assertion.
longjohn said: “It is of little importance though. Their real sentence starts now, they are said to be petrified of being released and being found by vigilantes. If they are, the crime committed by adult vigilantes wishing to “avenge” James Bulger will be far more heinous even than the original murder.”
What I’ve been thinking of throughout this entire thread is the latest Ruth Rendell (I think it’s still the latest). A convicted pedophile is released into the low-rent district of Kingmarkham. The residents protest, and eventually storm his house. The neighborhood is trashed, children are left unsupervised during all this, and finally someone utterly univolved gets in the wrong place at the wrong time, and is killed.
Some people like the idea of vigilante justice. Not saying I do or not, but I definitely don’t like it if it disrupts everything else.
*I’ve rewritten that sentence three times, and I’ll just have to hope it will be taken as I meant it. They didn’t get a normal, fulfilling adolescence, and they didn’t deserve one, and that’s good.
