Child Laws

[Dvus4ever]

I read this in the paper this morning and was wondering what others views on the subject are. I know this happened in Europe, but if it happened here . . . would the outcome be any different?

British teens who killed toddler to be released from prison
06/22/2001

LONDON - Two teenagers who were 10 when they tortured and killed 2-year-old James Bulger will be released, the government announced today, despite a long campaign by the toddler's mother to keep them behind bars.

Both young men, now 18, will be given new identities, which a judge has barred the British media from disclosing.

The decision to release Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, announced in a written Parliamentary reply by Home Secretary David Blunkett, followed separate, secret parole board hearings this week to determine whether the pair remain a threat to society.

They have spent eight years in a secure children's unit, after being found guilty of abducting and murdering the 2-year-old in February 1993 in a case that gained international attention.

For the rest of their lives, Venables and Thompson will be "subject to strict license conditions and liable to immediate recall if there is any concern at any time about their risk," Blunkett said in his written statement.

The pair, who will turn 19 in August, went before parole panels that included a judge, psychiatrist and an independent member who examined reports from doctors and criminologists.

The possibility of their release had angered James' family, who insist that as two of Britain's most notorious killers, they have not been punished sufficiently.
"I do not want revenge, I just want justice," James' remarried mother, Denise Fergus, said in a statement this week.

A national debate has also broken out on what is more important – revenge for James' death or rehabilitation of his killers – and raised questions about the age of criminal responsibility in England.

The murder shocked the nation. Venables and Thompson, who were playing hooky from school, lured James from a shopping center in Bootle, near Liverpool, northern England as he waited outside a butcher's shop for his mother. A video camera captured pictures of the toddler being led away by the two older boys, and those scenes have been replayed countless times on British television.

The boys dragged and led the toddler two miles through town to a railway line, where they hit him with bricks and metal bars, poured paint in his eyes and finally placed him on the tracks where a train cut him in half.

In handing down the sentence, the trial judge described their crime as an act of "unparalleled evil and barbarity" and recommended the boys serve a minimum of eight years.

The sentence was later increased to 15 years by former home secretary Michael Howard, but in October a judge restored the original sentence, saying it would not be beneficial for the boys to be in the "corrosive atmosphere of an adult prison."

He also noted if the crime had been committed a few months earlier, they could not have been tried or punished by the courts, because criminal responsibility under English law begins at 10. According to Frances Crook, the director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, that is one of the lowest in Europe.

"Other European countries have set the age at 14, 15, 16 or, in some cases, at 18," Crook told The Guardian newspaper.

"If children do something wrong, they should be dealt with through the care system not the criminal justice system. Children know if they have done something wrong, but they don't know the difference between various levels of wrongdoing."

Former head of Merseyside's Serious Crime Squad Detective Superintendent Albert Kirby, who led the Bulger investigation, disagreed. "I think there is no doubt they fully understood the magnitude of what they were doing," he told The Mirror newspaper this week.

"I have thought about it a great deal and I now accept that we were faced with two young boys who, together, were capable of committing evil in the extreme. It was clear they had formed the intention to take a child and kill him."

[SableCherub]

i don't believe that anyone is absolutely beyond reform...and it is not like they are completely free...i believe the article stated that at any time their behavior (threat to the community) becomes questionable they can be encarcerated...given the fact that they committed the act at such a young age and have subsequently received some sort of rehabilitative care...i say they should be released and tightly watched for some time...now if this had been someone that was already an adult...i would not say the same thing...but in the case of young children and teenagers...i do NOT believe they are beyond being rehabilitated and reintroduced into society as productive and non-threatening individuals...

[This message has been edited by SableCherub (edited June 22, 2001).]

[candygirl]

When it comes to minors and the law I'm usually pro rehabilitaion but this case and some others are a little different. These kids knew what they were doing and they probably knew that because they are minors nothing extremely drastic would happen. Kids these days know more than we think they do. They are aware of their actions and what kind of consequences can happen if they committ a crime, especially murder.

Okay, you let them go claiming rehabilitaion and something tragic happens once again. This could have been prevented if they weren't released from prison.

To me this is giving minors the idea that it's okay for them to committ crimes. On a side note, When I was in high shcool this girl I knew used to steal from clothing stores. She didn't care if she got caught because she knew that nothing would happen, infact she did get caught a couple of times and no charges were brought against her because she was a minor. I know this is not murder but where did she get this idea from. It's instances like the article Dvus4ever wrote about that have children thinking they're invincible

[This message has been edited by candygirl (edited June 22, 2001).]

[jccLove]

I completely agree with you Candy. Anyone who can remeber this case although it was eight years ago should be abe to remeber exactly what it was that these "kids" did. They LURED a child away to be slaughtered. Their intentions from the beginning was to kill the little boy. These are "kids" committing premeditated murder. I personally do not believe that they can be helped. What they did to the little boy was absolutely horrific. At 10 yrs old I knew right from wrong, when I was 10 which was about roughly 12 years ago children werent running around with guns, they werent shooting teachers, classmates, relatives, they werent making hit lists, they werent bombing schools, they werent trying out wrestling moves on 2 year old cousins, etc. "Kids" are capable of a lot more then we give them credit for. Everyone wants to blame the media, video games, music lyrics, movies, etc. But why is that we had movies just as bad and no one was running out imitating them. Take for example the movie Heathers remember Heather, Heather,Heather, Veronica. Winnona Ryder and Christian Slater were killing thier fellow classmates. How many of you knew someone who tried to commit suicide, kill a friend, or bomb a school after watching that. What about the game Frogger, they will have you believe now that if a child were to play that video game they would go out on the highway and try to dodge traffic. I just believe the underling problem is that people are no longer being held accountable for thier actions. Parents dont supervise thier children, thier kids are in the basement making bombs and they dont know. I believe that parenting has a great deal to do with the problems we face today BUT that excuse only goes so far. My Abuela worked long hard hours to support me she may not have always known what I was doing but I knew that I was going to be held accountable for my actions whatever they were. Sorry for the rant but this subject makes me extremely angry.