Jamie Bulger Killers. Release them or not?

[Cloudbringer]

Melusine,

Your grasp of English just explained it very well. I think you made some very valid points.


Cloudy

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Raindancer of the Laughing Hyenas Clan
Storm-Queen
StormCloud of the Black Knight: Heart Mind Soul Forever
"To sleep, perchance to dream..."

[Waluin]

I've been highly impressed with the intricate nature of everyone's diction, (reaonable) maturity, and reasoning. I really like this forum.

[Cloudbringer]

Originally posted by Waluin: I've been highly impressed with the intricate nature of everyone's diction, (reaonable) maturity, and reasoning. I really like this forum.

Waluin,

It is one of the best places for game info and pure communication between people that I've ever seen online. That 'maturity and reasoning' is one of the reasons it's such a popular place, too! We talk, we don't flame and ridicule each other. I almost didn't look in this thread as it is such a controversial and difficult (emotional) subject, but I know that the conversation usually allows for disagreements in civil tones, so I popped in to see what people had to say.
Glad I did!

Cloudy

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Raindancer of the Laughing Hyenas Clan
Storm-Queen
StormCloud of the Black Knight: Heart Mind Soul Forever
"To sleep, perchance to dream..."

[kiwidoc]

I am adding this explanation beacuse it was requested.

1/. Psychological and psychiatric reports can be prepared for court to consider for sentancing. The judge can decide to keep these confidential.

2/. The Secretary of the Home Office stepped in and overrode the judges decision on sentancing and placement (ie what kind of intsitution the boys should be placed in). He WAS told by his own law lords (similar to the supreme court) that this was not legal but he did it anyway. He overrode the psyche and probation reports recommendation, and overrode the judges decision. He made this decision purely becuase of the outcry in the media. The boys - who were 10 at the time - were sent to an institution for much older inmates until the European Court overrruled the Home Office. It is positive they would have been abused in this institution.

I am going to tell you some very blunt things here. I am NOT being callous, but I am trying to put this case in context. Yes what was done to this boy was brutal, but in terms of brutal murders it ranks pretty low. That year there were MANY more murders involving a great deal more brutality - but they werent publicised as much.

What I object to is the fact that THIS murder was turned into a special case - not to take account of how young the murderers were but somehow this was more viulent and brutal that all the ohter murders. I have read depositions (witness statements and medical reports) of other murders around that time and this was NOT the most shockingly brutal murder by a long chalk.

The bottom line was that the nation went into mass hysteria fueled by the media. I am deeply susupicious that the reason for this was nothing to d owit hjustice - it sold papers and pulled in the ratings. To me this is no reason to bend and break the law.


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There is only one kiwidoc, accept no substitutes

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEEDURE
www.judyhope.co.uk

[Melusine]

Originally posted by Cloudbringer: Melusine, Your grasp of English just explained it very well. I think you made some very valid points. Cloudy

Just so I won't be misunderstood, I wasn't fishing for compliments
While I speak English reasonably well, I still feel that in some of the most important issues, my mother tongue is the only language in which I can really argue my points, and even Dutch is sometimes inadequate to describe what I mean But that's just the barrier between thinking thoughts and finding the owrds to express them that everybody has to cross to make sense.



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Melusine, High Queen of Fluffies, Archbabe of the OHF, the LH,
the HADB and the SPAE(Society for the
Prevention of Acronym Extinction) &
Official Entertainer Elf of the BG2 Bar

Your voice is ambrosia

[Moridin]

I don't know the entire situation, only what the media chooses to relay to the public, so a direct comment on this issue is hard to make. But the facts that I have seen are:

2 children go to a mall, abduct a baby, torture him to death, and leave him tied to railroad tracks while they go home to eat supper. These children are sentenced to 8 years in a JD facility. They turn 18, are released, given new identities, money and passports b/c of the public outcry!

Doesn't the public have a right to know if a child murderer (reformed or not) is living amongst them? What if these kids decide to become elementary school teachers? Will they get married? Shouldn't a potential spouse know this?

Who cares if these kids now have to spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders? Beats the hell out of sitting in a prison cell hoping you won't be raped in the shower! The public deserves to know where these kids are and I hope they find out!

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Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig

[Donut]

Just a few points, Jamie was beaten to death with a 22lb railway fishplate and his body was lain across the track so that it was cut in half by a goods train.

Experts have decided that the two killers are no longer a threat to society so there is no question of keeping them locked up to protect us. The important question is has justice been served? They have shown remorse and understand the enormity of their crime.

Their parents will also be given new identities and have been living under their new names for some years. The killers will be released on a 'life licence'. What this means is that if they commit a crime or a serious driving offence or even start to to drink heavily they can be returned to prison within hours. They will be housed initially in a safe half-way house and will be supervised on a daily basis for the rest of their lives by the probation service.

A picture of Thompson aged 18 already exists and it's only a matter of time before this gets onto the internet. Eventually they will slip up and their identities revealed. There are organised groups committed to tracking them down. Their homes will have a hotline to the local Police Station in case of trouble. If this happens another new life will be created for them. Imagine having to live like that for the rest of your life. In some strange way I think the authorities have stumbled across an excellent form of punishment.

So in answer to the original question, I honestly don't know if they should have been be released - it's one of those things that gets batted back and forth in my head without ever being resolved.

BTW these two are SO bad that even Australia refused to take them.
BTW2 There is one of those half way houses about 400 yards from where I work. There are about 12 paedophiles, rapists & other sex offenders living there at any one time. Of course people living near them don't know about it!.
BTW3 Cavern Sniffer - thanks for posing the question, you are an intriguing person - being tucked up in a hole somewhere. Have you ever been to Enfield?


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Save Chip - Don't let Sarah win!
Official Titterer of the Laughing Hyenas

[Waluin]

Originally posted by Melusine: Just so I won't be misunderstood, I wasn't fishing for compliments While I speak English reasonably well, I still feel that in some of the most important issues, my mother tongue is the only language in which I can really argue my points, and even Dutch is sometimes inadequate to describe what I mean But that's just the barrier between thinking thoughts and finding the owrds to express them that everybody has to cross to make sense.

You are from the Netherlands, or at least originally? My father was an exchange student there for a few years, and I think part of it never left him. He speaks it rather fluently, and sometimes I wonder if he'd prefer to speak dutch over english (it obviously pleases him when he gets the chance to)

Every so often when he talks to other people on business trips to Europe he slips into a Dutch accent or slips in Dutch words. It's the strangest thing you'd ever see.

Two examples:

1) Switzerland. My parents are on vacation. My mother and father go into a local drug store. My father also knows German rather well, so he attempts to talk to the drug store owner in it. The drug store owner is flummoxed, saying "I'm afraid I didn't catch all of that. Are you Dutch?" My father laughs and explains everything in english. Turns out whenever he speaks german Dutch kept seeping in, and he says it with a Dutch accent so it compounds problems That and the german spoken in that area of Switzerland was a bit differen than the version he was familiar with.

2) London, Englad. Business trip. Bunch of 30/40 something Scottish women come into a pub he's in with some friends. THICK accents. My father, having a big scottish background (scottish immigrants a ways back in geneology all the way back to the Highlands)tells them that he has alot of scottish heritage, and discusses some random things with them. The woman he is talking to is perplexed, however, and says "Are you Dutch or something?" My dad, befuddled, replies "no, why?" "Because you sound like you are." Holland strikes again!

Anyway, it's always nice to meet people from the netherlands on the net. IT really makes his day when I say so.

[Yorick]

I remember this crime. It was big news in Australia at the time.It is an incredibly distressing scenario, because as Wolgir pointed out, more than one life is ruined. The three children involved and of course, the parents of those children. No one would argue that your child dying before you is an extreme and unnatural pain, which has ruined marriages and broken individuals concerned.

In times past (preindustrial revolution) if a child went astray, the father was held accountable. For children so young to commit such a terrible act begs the question, what kind of parenting did they have? How can they have had such disregard for a human life? However to my knowledge the parents were "normal" (what is normal anyway? ) people that were shattered by the development of the events. They were not child abusers or neglectful drug addicts. How did these kids get to this point?

As someone pointed out, a video was watched. Violent behaviour was imitated. Who is to blame now? The parents for letting them watch the video? The video makers for creating it? The actors for simulating the action? The store for renting/selling the video? Those that spend money to watch such material, and so make such material a lucrative business? Perhaps this is a case of "the village" raising the child. A violent, sick society creating two monsters that destroy an innocents life.

However the question of what to do with the offenders raises serious moral concerns. Is, as has been stated, 1) a prison rehabilitaive? 2)A punishment? Or 3)is it merely a means of preventing a situation from reoccurring.

Regarding no. 3 the situation will not reoccur with those two as perpetrators. They are no longer of the age where commiting right or wrong is learnt behaviour, rather than a premeditated action resultant from hypothesis and deduction. If they do recommit the circumstances, and the consequences will be completely different. But never again can there be doubt over their age and understanding of the situation.

Regarding no.1, as has been stated, prisons fail in their attempts to rehabilitate, so the kids will have a better chance outside of putting together a life totally blown apart by their terrible mistake. If prison is not rehabilitation then look at the issue of No.2, punishment.

Regarding no.2 they have been punished. According to the laws handed down by the same society responsible for creating them, they have served their time. Whether that punishment fits that crime is something that will always be debated - passionately as evident from some of these posts - but the reality is, no punishment can ever bring back James Bulgers life. Killing them doesn't, locking them up for ever doesn't, amputating or dismembering them doesn't, it only continues the horrible and terrible sequence of events that started when those two stupid children enticed a two year old away from his mother.

Yorick

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I am the walrus!.... er, no hang on....

A fair dinkum laughing Hyena!


[This message has been edited by Yorick (edited 06-29-2001).]

[Melusine]

Moridin, without making any statements as to whether I think these kids should be released, do you really think they would be allowed to become elementary school teachers- or any sort of teacher for that matter???? I think not.

OT:
Waluin, yes, I am from Holland originally, though my father is German (he has been living here for almost 30 years however and is fluent in Dutch - unfortunately I wasn't raised bilingually, but I do speak German). Tell your father: "Groeten van Sarah uit Nederland"
Funny how foreign languages and accents keep popping up in one's native language sometimes, isn't it My father has that too sometimes... he puts the stress on the wrong syllable or uses word in combinations that don't exist in Dutch and I go "Dad, germanism!" again

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Melusine, High Queen of Fluffies, Archbabe of the OHF, the LH,
the HADB and the SPAE(Society for the
Prevention of Acronym Extinction) &
Official Entertainer Elf of the BG2 Bar

Your voice is ambrosia