INTERNATIONAL CHILD AND YOUTH CARE NETWORK

25 JUNE 2001
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The decision to release Robert Thompson and Jon Venables has unleashed a storm of debate in the world's press. Below is an editorial followed by a positive viewpoint, of interest to us as child and youth care workers, from The Guardian

One life lost, two lives reclaimed

How can we be certain that Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, the killers of James Bulger, will not reoffend once released from secure custody? We can't.  However, instead of trusting Mr Michael Howard, who recommended 15 year sentences, or his successors as Home Secretary, we are prepared to accept the judgment of the Parole Board which has decided that the pair now pose no danger to 'public safety'. After years in which expert public servants have been derided from both Right and Left, we are happier to rely on them than politicians who have too often in this case betrayed more facility for grandstanding than for good sense.

Of course, Mrs Denise Fergus, the mother of James, remains distraught. Her grief during the last eight years can hardly be imagined. Families of victims of crime should certainly be more involved in the administration of justice. But, difficult though it is to say so publicly, they are not best placed to make decisions about when justice has finally been served.

The Parole Board is mindful of that when it says that, after a considerably better-funded education than they might have received at home, Thompson and Venables are fit to be released. But this position would not have been reached without the insistence of judges, particularly Lord Woolf, that sentencing should be above politics. While the Home Office has permitted the removal of these sentences from the hands of politicians, the Home Secretary still controls tariffs in the case of adult murderers. That situation should end too.

Thompson and Venables are at risk as they re-enter a society which contains violent and retributive elements. Public outrage in some areas remains acute, often fanned by those, particularly tabloid newspapers, who affect to deplore it. So, even if attempts to identify their whereabouts are unsuccessful, the pair will nevertheless spend the rest of their lives in a psychological prison, always in fear of exposure.

Bizarrely, it was Ann Widdecombe who affirmed two days ago that: 'These boys must have anonymity if they are to rebuild their lives.' Having abandoned her position on the Tory front bench and the posturing that has often gone with it, this intelligent woman, closely acquainted with the criminal justice system through her years as Prisons Minister, spoke rather more sense than we have heard from her for some time.

Robert Thompson and Jon Venables committed an unspeakable crime when children but, now young men, they have spent half their lives in custody. If our society cannot accept that they are redeemable after such punishment, then any pretence that we believe in rehabilitative criminal justice will have been exploded.
 

How young killers were rehabilitated

Robert Thompson and Jon Venables served their eight-year sentences inside separate local authority secure units, two of 28 such centres in the UK providing about 300 places.  These units offer the most intensive and expensive rehabilitation programmes available to young offenders, and their aim is to repair as human beings the most dangerous and damaged of children.

The units are the antithesis of young offenders' institutes (YOIs) which are essentially child jails structured along adult lines. In secure units there are no bars, no shared cells and small numbers of inmates. They offer high standards of education and therapy, extended periods of "useful activity" and treatment that YOIs cannot match.

On reaching their 19th birthdays in August, Venables and Thompson would have had to move to a YOI, and one of the factors in Lord Woolfe's ruling last October that effectively ended the boys' tariff was the "corrosive atmosphere" they would find there.

In secure units young rapists, murderers, arsonists and those suffering from other behavioural problems are inducted to a system based on incentives.  Children demonstrating self-control, an awareness of the consequences of their actions and other good behaviour are awarded points, which lead to rewards and greater comforts. Children may graduate from a cell with just a bed, to a room with a television and books. They may even be allowed to keep pets.

A school timetable operates with up to six hours of lessons a day, a huge contrast to the majority of YOIs where meaningful schooling is the exception, not the norm.

Venables and Thompson have not seen each other since they were led from the dock in Preston crown court, but both have been watched constantly by psychiatrists, attended daily classes and apparently benefited. Thompson, after years of denial, accepted his responsibility for Bulger's murder in 1999.

While the decision to release the boys will provoke outrage in some quarters, those involved in the administration of youth justice will see their progress as a mark of success. To rehabilitate two child killers sufficiently that the parole board — not a sentimental body — feels they pose no risk to society is no small achievement.

Paul Kelso, The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,511426,00.html

 

 

 

 

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