If the police assess the risk to you and consider it similarly grave, I’d trust their judgement there too.
Because many people have made it perfectly clear that given any opportunity, they would commit the crime of, at the very minimum, grievous bodily harm, possibly murder. The police are hoping that a panic alarm might prevent that from happening.
Just so I have a frame of reference: is “ex-criminal” protection done at all in the U.S. (aside from Henry Hill types who turn state’s evidence)? I’ve never heard of it, but something like this could easily have slipped under my radar.
My opinion is that the way you keep these perps safe is to keep them in prison with a “punishment fits the crime” sentence. 5 years? 12 years? It boggles the mind.
So, basically, you agree with FriarTed about the “Avenger of Blood” laws? Is it because you think that the judicial system is wrong, or not sufficient? Or do you believe that you - and by inference, me and him and her - should decide whether the accused is guilty, and if so, the sentence?
This does seem to be the best solution.
The punishment that a person recieves for a crime is just that, punishment for his/her crime and nothing else. The punishment they ahev received is incaceration, not being ripped to pieces by a mob or as per Alessen’s suggestion have the police ignore real threats to their lives.
I think the penal system is too much about reformation. This is what brings about the ridiculously short prison sentences, i.e. Since these torturers will not do it again, there’s no point in prolonging the sentence. They could still become productive members of the community. etc.
What’s forgotten is the concept of punishment as retribution. Someone who tortured an innocent kid should be tortured even worse. It will certainly give me the satisfaction if scumbags like the one referred to in the OP will be tortured to death. While it doesn’t take back the torture and the murder, a commensurate punishment will be quite cathartic.
I agree, these ex-convicts need to be protected, no matter how heinous their crimes were. In fact, the public outrage against them is so severe, we cannot trust regular law enforcement to maintain their protection.
Therefore, I hereby volunteer to protect them. If anyone from the UK police is reading this, please send me their personal information so I can protect them.
I promise, I will keep them safe from harm.
I promise. 
No, really, they shouldn’t. As a society, we shouldn’t use torture.
If government is tasked to dispense justice and proportional punishment requires torture, why should government shy away from this? We have the death penalty, why not torture?
Slight hijack to gain a better understanding of the issues involved:
Consider the case of notorious American murderer/cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer
Is this kind of thing assiduously avoided in UK prisons? Or is there rather a “no special treatment” policy? Are notorious criminals routinely kept in solitary or somehow separated from the general population of convicts for safety reasons?
Because we wrote it into our Constitution that we don’t do that.
My response was based on the caveat that the Constitution is amended to include this exception.
I suppose you could argue that torturing someone that you already know isn’t dissuaded by torture is pretty much just causing pain for the sake of inspiring fear. At least with the death penalty the punishment itself serves an objective purpose, by rendering the criminal physically incapable of reoffending.
Those sentences do seem appallingly brief, considering the heinous nature of the offenses.
But rather than keep these ex-felons in the UK after the completion of their sentences, when they might very likely be recognized and attacked by a vigilante, why not pass a law to require them to move to another Commonwealth country (under a reciprocal agreement with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa etc. for the exchange of such individuals) under a new identity? Police protection need not be provided, but local police would know to keep an eye on them if necessary.
You know it’s hard for me to believe that the UK justice system doesn’t reconize that while MANY folks in jail simply made a small mistake there’s ALSO BATSHIT insane sociopaths who need to be locked up for LIFE. Don’t you guys have mental insistutions for the criminally insane? There are a lot of dangerous sociopaths out there…and the perp sounds like if he’s released he’ll commit more child abuse (and not " Focus on Your Own Damn Family style child abuse) but real horrfing child abuse that makes Saw look like a Disney film
Perhaps if we visited upon these people the type of pain and torture that they subject others to rather than simply locking them in a cell with protection from the elements and three squares a day, there would be more of a feeling among the general populace that justice has been done, and therefore less of a feeling that retribution is still due.
Such a system would also have the added benefit of lesser prison time. Pain is a great inhibitor. If we made people truly regret the pain they inflicted on others by visiting the same upon them, they’ll be far less likely to re-offend in the future. Like Frank Sinatra once said about child molesters: “You let me put 'em in the hospital for six months and when they come out they won’t do that anymore.”
There are countries in the Middle East where ‘in kind’ punishments are meted out; they were also used in the past: cutting off the hands of thieves, for example. These punishments are often carried out in public, possibly to pacify the feelings of the crowd. I thought that here in the west, we disparaged behaviour like that, but from some of the responses I have read here, obviously not universally. I believe that, as I said before, justice should be dispassionate and detached.
Anduril said
I understand his sentiments, but I want to believe that we’ve moved on from satisfying blood lust. I believe that the judiciary should be seen to be an exemplar; not to be seen using practises that those we condemn use.
Well, in this case the mother had already been through all that.
Her father was a sex offender and abandoned the family. Her mother neglected and abused her. She found out age 12 that the man she thought was her father in fact wasn’t. Because of the abuse she suffered at home she was taken into social care, where she and her brother were put into a care home. Her brother was then targeted by a peadophile ring and forced to involve others (they were still children at this time).
She married as a teenager to a man 17 years older than her, and then eventually moved in with the person who killed her child, who himself had been systematically abused as a child.
So she’s already been more pain and torture than any person should have to bear, I can’t see how inflicting yet more pain on her will achieve anything (given than the pain inflicted beforehand failed to stop her acting in this way).
Yes, we do have ciminally insane asylums, but I think the problem is in deciding whether the person is insane, as opposed to just being very, very nasty. I think that beyond a certain level (one these people have clearly gone over) they should be classified as insane.
This may have been caused by the fact that these abusers have themselves had appalling lives.
They seem to have been conditioned by their upbringing to believe that their behaviour is normal and acceptable. I think that their way of thinking and behaving is so deeply ingrained that, short of having very long and intensive psychiatric treatment, they will always be a risk to society. So they should remain in prison, in solitary confinement, for the rest of their lives.
What I think is interesting is that we all condemn the actions of these people, yet there are posters here who would like to perform those acts (or have them performed) themselves on the abusers. If we do that, what is it, then, that makes us better than them?