Am I now living in the village near Frankenstein’s castle, watching the torch bearing villagers gathering at the gates? Is public opinion and government policy a feather in the wind blown by the red top tabloids and the extremist Daily Mail? I haven’t read about the James Bulger/Jon Venables case this week so I don’t have any great knowledge. If I’d read every single newspaper article I’d have no greater ‘knowledge’ anyway. This isn’t about murder or how evil someone is it’s about the way in which news is constructed. Several years ago I worked with a prisoner who committed a double murder on the day of a major national news event. The papers that day and week were full of this major event and so my client’s murder of an adult and child only made his local paper. Had he committed this murder on any other day he’d have made the front page that day and the next day and the next. Is he less evil than Jon Venables or just less newsworthy? If James Bulger had disappeared on 31st August 1997 or 11th September 2001 we may never have heard of him, Jon Venables or Robert Thompson. It’s sad but a fact that other children have been killed, other children have committed murder and other offenders have been recalled for breaching the conditions of their licence. Lots of them. I get to meet them all the time. We should clearly give up on the nonsense of rehabilitation and just think of people as Good or Bad, Evil or Fit to wander the streets. Then we’ll bring back hanging. We’ll start with murderers and those who commit GBH because clearly they have the potential, paedophiles obviously and it would be unfair not to include other sex offenders. Who next? It worries me how, without a hint of irony, this evil and violent man brings out such violence in others. How awful must your life have been that you kill someone when you’re so young?
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