News Venables in Jail again

[nath]

you simply see those cases and connect them to previous ones.

Fair enough, and often is an entirely relative term but I guess I mean to say it happens frequently enough to get on my nerves.

Anyway, my point is this, in a sensible free thinking country those kids may have been executed.

Sensible free thinking countries don't execute, it's such an easy way out for the criminal and society. Given they were children when they committed the original crime, I don't think the responsibility of that action can be placed firmly on them. As a result, much though it's unpleasant, they should treated for the psychological/psychiatric disorders that they almost certainly have *while* being kept somewhere that they can not be a danger to the public. Evidently the latter part hasn't happened but execution is not OK, in my opinion.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Fair enough, and often is an entirely relative term but I guess I mean to say it happens frequently enough to get on my nerves

That actually might be the case, since i post here a lot and do tend to voice my opinions on most issues. So from sheer volume, it's quite possible it seems i'm more frequently doing what annoys you.

 

[nath]

That actually might be the case, since i post here a lot and do tend to voice my opinions on most issues. So from sheer volume, it's quite possible it seems i'm more frequently doing what annoys you.

And conversely, due to the volume of messages you post, the relative few that defy logic may seem insignificant regardless of how absurd they may be.

 

[ECA]

Deport them. There is still a lot of space left in Australia.

How many points do you get on your application form for murder and child porn?

I thought murder was only 80 and child porn only 15 and you needed 100? Seems like he still has some more crimes to go to get there - but he seems to be working on it.

Oh I forgot +5 for speaking english natively so he probably only did the child porn to qualify for the free trip.

 

[tierk]

I dont claim to be a specialist in anything related to this case. But just for those of you that seem to think i am making up the facts about them knowing if they were doing something that was wrong or bad or not please feel free to read the following article.

Murder in the UK - Serial Killers - Cannibals - Child Killers - Mass Murder

The relevant part goes as follows:

Did the boys know the difference between right and wrong? This was an important issue for the prosecution. The Victorian concept of “doli incapax” was established to protect innocent (and ignorant) children from corporal punishment. In an earlier era, wild street children were executed for their crimes. “Doli incapax” meant that children were incapable of wrongdoing because they cannot grasp the consequences of their actions. To this point, Jon and Robert’s teachers testified. Psychiatrists took the stand, believing both defendants knew the severity of their crime. The court then played the recorded police interviews, which also revealed their understanding of the charges

For the people that are trying to claim that i am suggesting genetic engineering or comparing me to Hitler, please read what i actually say and not what you think i am saying. I dont make a claim to do this for every killer or crime but suggest that when a crime is heinous - as this one clearer is - then the punishment must fit the crime.

Can anyone here seriously tell me that these two little fuckers being out and about after only 8 years is justice?

As someone else pointed out in this thread earlier, if parents can be held responsible for their kids not going to school why are they not responsible for this kind of stuff?

 

[old.Tohtori]

Tierk, where do you draw the lines of punishing parents for kids crimes?

 

[throdgrain]

Agreed Tierk.

 

[Chilly]

I did very wrong things when I was 8-12 that I a) knew were wrong b) I really shouldnt have done and (crucially) c) will never do again.

At such a young age, surely kids are able to be "mended"? There's a good 10 years to solidify their character from 10 to 20 and with the right support they could probably be turned into pretty standard people.

I also object to the death penalty. My argument is simple:

Prosecutions are and never will be 100% correct. Now personally I could sleep at night knowing that 1/100 people sent to the chair were innocent of the crime at hand but if it were me I'd be absolutely outraged. At least with prison you have a chance to get out and carry on, if you're dead- you dead.

The argument about parental responsibility is a good one, but an incredibly complex one. What if only one parent is home most of the time - do you give them both 15 years in prison, or do you weight it? Do you automatically give the father more time if he's absent? It's a massive heap of shit in the end.

In general, in the UK the buck stops at whoever did it, and this tends to work. It feeds back up through the chain of bad behaviour and generally discourages things over time.

 

[old.user4556]

I did very wrong things when I was 8-12 that I a) knew were wrong b) I really shouldnt have done and (crucially) c) will never do again.

At such a young age, surely kids are able to be "mended"?

Indeed Chilly, what I'm thinking is that when I was a kid, I did a whole raft of bad shit with my friends. I got in with a bad crowd but never ever anything as extreme and grotesque as what Venables did. If you're showing crazy-ass tendancies at a young age then personally I think you're likely to go off the rails later in life.

Speaking from experience, once such guy I grew up with (and was part of the above group of friends) seemed like a decent bloke; teenage drinker and liked a bit of dope, came from a middle class family but he had an underlying weird streak of not knowing when to stop, or when enough was enough. We all knew as a group when we took things too far, but he couldn't stop himself (e.g. as petty as winding up the teachers at high school, but he wanted to pursue it outside of school, go to their house, damage their cars, pick on their kids etc.). Anyway, around 1996 my dad was made redundant and we moved to the other side of Scotland and I lost touch (but was happy to in retrospect). 4 years on, I saw an article on the news showing him being lead out of a court for attempted murder.

(and after a Google) Blood lust of teenage abductor. - Free Online Library

I was absolutely shocked to hear how extreme he had got, but in a way I wasn't surprised.

My point? I think children / teenagers do know right from wrong unless there is a deep seated mental issue going on, I've seen it happen first hand. Could he have been "mended"? I really don't think so, the guy was fucked up from his early teens when I met him right through to when he was locked up - it simply escalated through the years.

 

[Tom]

Can anyone here seriously tell me that these two little fuckers being out and about after only 8 years is justice?

As someone else pointed out in this thread earlier, if parents can be held responsible for their kids not going to school why are they not responsible for this kind of stuff?

Playing the blame game is very easy, and a rather weak argument. Its indisputable that these two were raised in extremely abusive environments, and therefore were emotionally crippled when they committed that awful crime.

Punishment isn't going to bring James Bulger back, and it wouldn't ever have brought back Thompson and Venables either. There's no question in my mind that punishment, retribution or justice (legalised revenge) are not the correct responses here, because answering the demands of an ill-educated baying mob is not going to benefit anyone. That's why no matter how large a majority says they want to see capital punishment returned, it never will be, and rightly so.

I'd rather just see them rehabilitated so that they never feel the urge to commit such a crime again. Give them the care and support they never received while growing up. Show them the error of their ways, let them come to terms with what they did. That's how you create a better society, by allowing people to learn from their mistakes. Hopefully this case, tragic as it is, will allow the professionals involved in their rehabilitation to learn what the triggers were that made these two decide to kill Bulger, and then to teach others how to spot the early signs. Perhaps then the family environments that helped create Thompson's and Venables's personalities will be less likely to arise. I say less likely because in another case, that of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, the causes of their actions don't appear to be anywhere near as obvious, having both been raised in relatively caring family environments (although Hindley's was apparently less so).

The court is best placed to decide on what type of punishment is most appropriate for Venables's offence. Anything we say about why he had those images is speculation, but the court will know why he did, and will have set his sentence accordingly. Hopefully its a symptom of a wider problem, and he'll continue to receive the support he needs to enable him to live a full, and normal life.

Frankly I find the opinions of those who'd rather see them "strung up", offensive. If that's the kind of society you want to see, flights to Iran are relatively cheap. As for Denise Fergus, I sympathise with her loss but each time I hear her whining voice clamouring for attention, that sympathy is chipped away. If she had a shred of dignity or intelligence she'd have told the media a long time ago to fuck off, before retiring into solitude to properly deal with her loss. Instead she'd rather be the mouthpiece of a particularly unattractive claque, and I have a feeling that in the long run, she'll make herself more ill because of it.

 

[old.user4556]

With all due respect Tom, I find your opinion naive in that you assume that Venables and Thomson are rational, caring and understanding human beings, like you and me, that can moulded into something human. I do not believe this to be the case and I'm utterly tired of hearing the "bad upbringing" excuse being used as a counter argument.

I could pull out dozens of examples of people that had terrible childhoods that went on to be very decent people (e.g. Billy Connolly who had a very poor upbringing through persistent rape and physical abuse by his own father) and yet some that had excellent and fruitful upbringings (such as the guy I grew up with) who went on to try to murder a teenage girl.

 

[DaGaffer]

For the people that are trying to claim that i am suggesting genetic engineering or comparing me to Hitler, please read what i actually say and not what you think i am saying. I dont make a claim to do this for every killer or crime but suggest that when a crime is heinous - as this one clearer is - then the punishment must fit the crime.

If you create laws that allow you to euthanase children, or lock up the parents for the actions of their children, you're on the road to ruin. You can't enact laws for "the special cases" either, the law doesn't work like that. Once on the books, and once there is precedent, everything else is up to the presiding Judge's application and interpretation; and given our Judiciary's ability to get it wrong, I certainly wouldn't want to give any judge that kind of power.

Can anyone here seriously tell me that these two little fuckers being out and about after only 8 years is justice?

No, but that only goes to show the fallable nature of the justice system, and reinforce the above point.

As someone else pointed out in this thread earlier, if parents can be held responsible for their kids not going to school why are they not responsible for this kind of stuff?

Because whether you like it or not, children can't be controlled or watched by their parents 24/7, and nor should they be. A school-age child is an independent actor. Now, you can make an argument that if Thompson and Venables' family background was so abusive, then prosecute the parents for child abuse; in otherwords, the crime they commited, not the crime they failed to stop. Because once again, if you open up that can of worms, think about where it could end for all of us.

 

[Krazeh]

With all due respect Tom, I find your opinion naive in that you assume that Venables and Thomson are rational, caring and understanding human beings, like you and me, that can moulded into something human. I do not believe this to be the case and I'm utterly tired of hearing the "bad upbringing" excuse being used as a counter argument.

I don't think Tom is assuming that at all. He seems to quite clearly agree that they are seriously messed up individuals. The difference is he doesn't hold the view that they are irredeemably evil or that rehabilitation and therapy won't be able to assist them in undoing some of the damage done to them in their early years, hopefully enough that they can lead something close to a normal life.

I could pull out dozens of examples of people that had terrible childhoods that went on to be very decent people (e.g. Billy Connolly who had a very poor upbringing through persistent rape and physical abuse by his own father) and yet some that had excellent and fruitful upbringings (such as the guy I grew up with) who went on to try to murder a teenage girl.

So because some people who have terrible childhoods can manage to cope with it then everyone should be able to? And while what happened to Billy Connolly was terrible I think the fact it didn't start till he was 10 probably had a major impact on how it affected him, how would he have turned out if the sexual and physical abuse had started at a much younger age?

And as for the guy you grew up with, you state he had an excellent and fruitful upbringing but how much do you really know about it? It may have been that from what you saw it looked like an excellent and fruitful upbringing but that doesn't make it so. The following is taken from another forum I frequent where a discussion was taking place about the UK Prison service and how prisoners are dealt with and was written by member who happens to be a clinical psychologist -

Some people seem to have it all --supportive, loving parents, a materially comfortable background, good educational opportunities-- and they still go off the rails. How can this be? I read this litany every so often in magazines or newspapers when they recount the childhood of someone who committed some incomprehensibly vile act. Meanwhile I (and my colleagues) point at various lines in the biography and go: "that's why. And that's why. And that's why...". Parents can be loving, but fail to impose consistent boundaries. They can be fair, but not firm. They can be caring, but not affectionate. They can be generous to the point of spoiling a child and generating a sense of over-entitlement. They can show poor impulse control in their own behaviours (a parent can drink way too much and behave like a ****. Middle-class parents who would not dream of laying a finger on their children can still have hysterical, violent rows in front of them). Thing is, it takes someone like a clinical psychologist to spot the problems and know how they make a difference. Most laypeople are oblivious. And how would they know any different? When little Johnnie turns out to be a drug dealing, child raping, bank robbing ******* do you think his parents are going to 'fess up: "Yeah, sorry, our bad, we shouldn't have whipped him with chains and locked him in the cellar for being disobedient as a kid...". Of course not. It's always: "We don't know where we went wrong...".

I think it aptly demonstrates that what may, from the outside, appear to be a "good" childhood may not always be one.

 

[Tom]

With all due respect Tom, I find your opinion naive in that you assume that Venables and Thomson are rational, caring and understanding human beings, like you and me, that can moulded into something human. I do not believe this to be the case and I'm utterly tired of hearing the "bad upbringing" excuse being used as a counter argument.

How do you know they are not? The answer, of course, is that you don't. Its your own prejudices that make you think that two children who can be responsible for such horror can never be redeemed. I don't believe that's true, and neither I suspect do the professionals involved in their rehabilitation. I'm quite happy to defer to their expert judgement, rather than chant with the baying mob, who understand little, but who like to have their say.

 

[old.user4556]

How do you know they are not?

In the case of Venables:

Firstly, he brutally murdered a child.

Secondly, he's been locked up for accessing child porn.

I'd say those were good enough reasons to not even try rehabilitating them.

 

[old.Tohtori]

In the case of Venables:

Firstly, he brutally murdered a child.

Secondly, he's been locked up for accessing child porn.

I'd say those were good enough reasons to not even try rehabilitating them.

Murdered -as a child-and it's images, not porn, which can be as simple as childhood pictures of a kid sitting in a bathtub(which can be counted as child pornography). Seeing his history, the police would probably arrest him for some seminude facebook pages that teens put up.

Sure it's wrong what he's done, but it's not simply "He's a brutal murderer and a child molester."

the truth is somewhere in between. It's not as bad as people make it to be, but there's clearly something wrong.

But if they can rehabilitate hardcore murderers, why not a one time killer?

 

[Tom]

In the case of Venables:

Firstly, he brutally murdered a child.

Secondly, he's been locked up for accessing child porn.

I'd say those were good enough reasons to not even try rehabilitating them.

I think that without fully understanding the context of either, you're forming that opinion prematurely.

 

[Garaen]

I would love to live in your dream world Tom. Your niave outlook is admirable but fundamentally flawed. Rehabilitating all "bad" people is a noble idea, but some people are and always will be (for lack of a better word) evil.

 

[nath]

I would love to live in your dream world Tom. Your niave outlook is admirable but fundamentally flawed. Rehabilitating all "bad" people is a noble idea, but some people are and always will be (for lack of a better word) evil.

Does that mean we shouldn't try with ANY people?

Incidentally, what would happen if people had that attitude about mental illness? "Don't bother researching psychiatric medication, these people are fucked". Think how far things have come in that field, who's to say that advances won't be made in our understanding of people who are capable of such horrific acts and thus allowing us to rehabilitate and prevent*.


*Admittedly, this is exactly what Tom was saying, but hell, he's right.

 

[old.Tohtori]

I would love to live in your dream world Tom. Your niave outlook is admirable but fundamentally flawed. Rehabilitating all "bad" people is a noble idea, but some people are and always will be (for lack of a better word) evil.

Rehabilitating all is a fools work, but still, who's to say this is a lost cause?

If looked at only from the crimes commited, rehabilitation wouldn't be out of the question. First crime was done at a very young age, which speaks for lack of adult judgement. Second crime isn't psychopathic(i think).

At a glance it may seem like a lost cause, but i wouldn't say it's not worth trying. Then again that would require atleast co-operation from the criminal and i don't have the slightest of idea if the person is in a state of mind to want get better.

 

[throdgrain]

I mostly agree with what you say Tom, but in this instance you're living in cloud cookoo land.

Toht, I would or wouldnt agree with you, but I never know what you're going on about

 

[old.Tohtori]

That from all presented, we can't say this guy is beyond rehabilitation

 

[nath]

I mostly agree with what you say Tom, but in this instance you're living in cloud cookoo land.

What makes you think that they can't be rehabilitated, or at least some sort of productive understanding can't be gained by working with these kids (while ensuring that they're of no danger to other people).

 

[Chilly]

That from all presented, we can't say this guy is beyond rehabilitation

He probably is NOW - but if he was tkane care of when much younger I reckon he could have been moved a long way toward being fairly normal.

 

[throdgrain]

What makes you think that they can't be rehabilitated, or at least some sort of productive understanding can't be gained by working with these kids (while ensuring that they're of no danger to other people).

Because after committing the most terrible crime since Myra Hyndley the bloke gets away with an astonishingly light sentence, gets a new identity courtesy of the tax payer, then despite the loathing of pretty much the entire country he goes downloading child porn.

Personally I hate the fact that he got away so lightly, but I do take on board all the stuff about him being below the legal age of responsibility (even though I dont agree with that for a minute) but the fact that he has committed this next crime seals the deal as far as I'm concerned. After all, it's not just that it's a crime, it's this particular crime too, which is surely related to his first heinous deed.

Anyway, I thought if you were convicted of murder any further conviction returned you to your life sentence. Presumably they got away even with being convicted of that the first time around, because of thier age.

 

[nath]

Because after committing the most terrible crime since Myra Hyndley the bloke gets away with an astonishingly light sentence, gets a new identity courtesy of the tax payer, then despite the loathing of pretty much the entire country he goes downloading child porn.

Personally I hate the fact that he got away so lightly, but I do take on board all the stuff about him being below the legal age of responsibility (even though I dont agree with that for a minute) but the fact that he has committed this next crime seals the deal as far as I'm concerned. After all, it's not just that it's a crime, it's this particular crime too, which is surely related to his first heinous deed.

Anyway, I thought if you were convicted of murder any further conviction returned you to your life sentence. Presumably they got away even with being convicted of that the first time around, because of thier age.

That's just to do with their sentence, it doesn't explain why you think they can't be rehabilitated or, at the very least, understood to a certain extent so that this sort of thing can be prevented in the future. Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting they *are* rehabilitated and I'm also not suggesting that they could have been within that short time they were locked up. My point is to counter the suggestion of execution as the only real solution.

 

[old.Tohtori]

He probably is NOW - but if he was tkane care of when much younger I reckon he could have been moved a long way toward being fairly normal.

True, if they were taken into rehabilitation systems at that age, it would've been more effective. -Only- locking them up may have been a haste move. That is to say, ofcourse they ahd to be locked up.

But, as rehabilitation goes, one would have to see if there's still homicidal tendencies and deal with that. That much is given, but also should see if there's a correlation with interest to child pornography and being locked up at that early age. Afterall there's little sexual growing up in lockdown.

In short; the guy may not be a homicidal maniac anymore and the sexual interest in kids may be a result of lack of sexual growth.

Note; may, maybe, could be, etc. Just speculating.

 

[throdgrain]

That's just to do with their sentence, it doesn't explain why you think they can't be rehabilitated or, at the very least, understood to a certain extent so that this sort of thing can be prevented in the future. Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting they *are* rehabilitated and I'm also not suggesting that they could have been within that short time they were locked up. My point is to counter the suggestion of execution as the only real solution.

Well look, the point I was trying to make was that after committing one of the most terrible crimes ever, to be specific a crime against a child, after 8 years in jail with people trying to "rehabilitate" him, he goes and watches child porn. Now I'm no expert - thankfully - but child porn is essentially violence against children. Hmm, let me think, what was his first crime... oh yeah ....

How often does he have to go to prison claim he's cured then go out and do something else? He's had a chance surely? As far as I can see he's the lucky piece of human excrement in the history of the world, yet there he is again.

Whats next, we let him out again in two years, and it's all quiet for a couple of years then it's found he's done something else to someone elses child? Can we take that risk? On the advice of some wanker "experts"? I say no, we cant.

 

[old.Tohtori]

I have to point out Throd that it's "indecent pictures of children" which as i said could be anything from sex acts to half naked pictures of 15 year olds on facebook.

All speculation, of what pictures he had in his posession.

Also i don't think it's too far fetched that this guys sexual growth was stumped by being out of society during puberty. That could explain sexual interest in people of the age that he was taken out.

So ooone can speculate that he could be healed from homicidal tendencies, but not cured from a warped sexual image.

 

[throdgrain]

I think thats just bollocks toht. If there's water in the sky, that generally means it's raining. I think you're just taking a devils advocate point of view for the sake of it.