In a bizarre switch everyone EXCEPT the government goes mad

[Walsingham]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8565619.stm

 

Maggie Atkinson, who is some sort of Quango bandit ushered quietly through the halls of office by Ed Balls against the advice of a parliamentary committee has said that the Bulger killers were too young to know any better. Apparently at such a young age they can still be helped and nurtured. I'm not sure what she thinks they should be nurtured into being. Policemen? Brain surgeons?

 

Now, to some who are too young to know the case or irremediably foreign ths may be all a mystery, so here is a summary of the injuries inflicted on the toddler, Jamie Bulger, who was abducted from his mother in broad daylight at a shopping centre. I have spoilertagged some of it as being particularly disturbing. The description is from the Independent Newspaper.

 

JAMES Bulger's killers inflicted 42 injuries on the two-year-old, a Home Office pathologist yesterday told the jury trying two 11-year-olds for his murder. He had multiple fractures to the skull and the right side was shattered.

 

Dr Alan Williams counted 22 bruises, splits and grazes on James's face and head, and 20 more wounds on his body...

 

Dr Williams spent 33 minutes describing the external injuries suffered by James. Many to his legs had been inflicted when he was naked.

The prosecution claims the killers stripped him from the waist. It is also claimed a grotesque indecency was inflicted on James: the foreskin of his **** was pulled back.

 

Many of the injuries covered an area of less than one square inch. But others were massive. Dr Williams traced the lines of skull fractures, his left hand mapping the attack from the jaw, over the forehead, across virtually all of the skull. Brain damage was extensive, including a haemorrhage at the centre.

 

 

One other implement was responsible for James's suffering. Injury number 13 was bruising to the area around the right cheek and ear. It was a severe blow which, Dr Williams said, left a pattern, a grooved mark. It was probably caused by stamping or kicking.

 

Jamie Bulger was 2 years old. There has never been any suggestion that the boy can have done anything to his attackers to provoke the attack in any way.

 

I think this is interesting from three perspectives.

 

1. I'm furious and I'm rarely furious.

2. Why in the name of all that's holy are we paying for buffoons to make pronouncements of this sort via public funds?

3. Why is it so hard for some people to grasp that humans are occasionally ****ing evil? Even kids?

Edited March 13, 2010 by Walsingham

[I want teh kotor 3]

Wow. Those kids need to be fried, or at least locked up for the rest of their lives. And that woman is just crazy.

[Orogun01]

To the OP: you forgot to include Maggie's perspective. She obviously think that processing these children through the system will make them worse. It's fair to say that the difference between amateur and pro is that you went to prison-school; treating young offenders as adults may end up creating a worse creature.

[I want teh kotor 3]

Yes, putting them through the system would ordinarily make them worse. In this case, however, that's really not possible; there is no help for them, and they can't get much worse.

[Masterfade]

Lock 'em up for life, then it will not matter if they go worse.

 

Oh, and lock up their parents too.

[Walsingham]

I honestly wonder how many proper nutters these quango-fairies have actually met. By teh sound of the article I linked to the Commons felt she had no proper experience of anything besides serving on committees. This has been mentioned before in many places but we actually have several quangocrats on more money than the Prime Minister! What do we actually get for it? Half-arsed rambling about vague principles.

 

If, as has been suggested, people like Maggie are supposed to deliver value by leadership and inspiration they need to be remarkable and well rounded people who can command respect not party dimwits.

 

Also, while you are corrrect to say she felt that the children should be dealt with in a secure environment I think it's mental to suggest they can be cured. Cured by what exactly? And to what degree of safety for the public? No-one would accept a bomb as being defused if a method had been applied to it with such a poor success rate. The government - not just this administration - deliberately fudges the reoffending rates because it simply doesn't want to pay for care, and instead we play Russian roulette every day.

 

I was reminded that I had formed the foundations of this opinion while talking to a man who was retiring from the business of providing specialist security services to 'manage' individuals who the _police_ felt were too dangerous and unpredictable to approach. He simply couldn't face having his family living in a n area where he knew so many former murderers rapists etc out on license. He knew there would be others where he moved to, but he felt it wouldn't be so bad if he didn't see them so often. He told me all this with a bandage on his head where he'd been stabbed that afternoon.

[Rosbjerg]

It's difficult to grasp how anyone can be this cruel. I can't really form an opinion without more information, where the kids abused by their parents? did they have a history of violence? etc etc etc.. If this was just some out-of-the-blue demonic insanity, rather than the culmination of years of cruelty, then I would argue that they could perhaps be "saved" - at least it would be worth looking to see what caused it rather than just throw them in with the trash.

[Darque]

Nuke 'em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

[Zachariah Tam]

These are children and children do not truly understand the correlation of cause and consequence. While I do believe what happen was a real tragedy, but the failure lies with the parents of these offenders. Where were they while this horrendous act was done?

[Orogun01]

These are children and children do not truly understand the correlation of cause and consequence. While I do believe what happen was a real tragedy, but the failure lies with the parents of these offenders. Where were they while this horrendous act was done?

Children do understand the correlation of cause and consequence, you just need to make it clear to them. If my mother told me "Stay quiet or I will bust your skull" that's a perfect example of stating the consequence. The problem is that the brats believe that they will get away with it because they are kids. Oh, and don't blame the parents is not their fault that they spawned the devil's child.

[Walsingham]

It's difficult to grasp how anyone can be this cruel. I can't really form an opinion without more information, where the kids abused by their parents? did they have a history of violence? etc etc etc.. If this was just some out-of-the-blue demonic insanity, rather than the culmination of years of cruelty, then I would argue that they could perhaps be "saved" - at least it would be worth looking to see what caused it rather than just throw them in with the trash.

 

I'm sure ther are many psych analyses of the two murderers out there, but the one I know best is from The Jigsaw Man. Unfortuantely I've leant my copy away so I can't look up his analysis. But yes, from memory, there was a background of abuse and neglect and a long history of various authorities knowing these kids wouldn't turn out well. But to my way of thinking that's a separate if important issue. Not nearly enough preventive action is taken to break cycles of bonkers families. Failure repeats itself far more reliably than success. But I think a tremendous amount could be done and should be done at earlier ages with intensive playgroups etc.

 

But this does not detract from the enormity of their crime nor from the fact that they clearly knew what they were doing was wrong. They removed the boy to a secluded spot, they lied to passers by, they had no natural incentive to want the boy in their company, and finally and most seriously they (apparently) deliberately tried to have his body run over by a train (and it was) to disguise the cause of death. It was a prolonged attack, and cannot possibly have occurred without the victim making very clear how distressed he was.

 

Does that make them evil, per se? I honestly don't know. But I do believe that such a degree of disfunctino, whatever its deeper nature, is something we should be protected from by any and all means.

[Killian Kalthorne]

They should have been executed for what they did. For some acts there is no redemption possible.

[Walsingham]

They should have been executed for what they did. For some acts there is no redemption possible.

 

I would object to this statement, but the amount of money that has been spent on these two bastards could have saved thousands of kids who just need a bit of support in order to make a proper go of life.

[I want teh kotor 3]

He's right. Try to "help" these kids, with the intention of at some point de-institutionalizing them, and you'll just create the next round of Stalins and Hitlers.

[Walsingham]

He's right. Try to "help" these kids, with the intention of at some point de-institutionalizing them, and you'll just create the next round of Stalins and Hitlers.

 

I wouldn't go that far. But repeat offenders must be committting doubel digit percentages of serious violent crime. This gives me an idea...

[Walsingham]

I've just spent a good wedge of my breakfasting time hunting for recidivism (repeat offending) rates for serious violent crime in the UK. Nothing seemed very workable besides tha inherent suspiciousness of the absence of publicly available data. There seems no reason why such data could not be compiled. It's a very simple matter of record who someone is and how often they have been at HM pleasure. Both must be on record if only to manage liability.

 

The most interesting study I found was a longitudinal study looking at 70 year olds who had committed several crimes, working out when and why they stopped.

 

I also found an article pointing out that with sex offenders even if statistics were compiled domestically they ignore the overseas element. Our offenders are not merely a serious risk to our own citizens, but to everyone else as well.

[Calax]

Nuke 'em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

Well, if you do it from orbit how do you know they're still there?

 

These are children and children do not truly understand the correlation of cause and consequence. While I do believe what happen was a real tragedy, but the failure lies with the parents of these offenders. Where were they while this horrendous act was done?

Children do understand the correlation of cause and consequence, you just need to make it clear to them. If my mother told me "Stay quiet or I will bust your skull" that's a perfect example of stating the consequence. The problem is that the brats believe that they will get away with it because they are kids. Oh, and don't blame the parents is not their fault that they spawned the devil's child.

Actually this ties into more of the "nature v nurture" debate. The children could possibly have still been ok, even if predisposed to "evil" if their parents had done something. Not saying it would have happened inevitably but there's always the chance, but that's under the assumption that they did nothing.

[Orogun01]

These are children and children do not truly understand the correlation of cause and consequence. While I do believe what happen was a real tragedy, but the failure lies with the parents of these offenders. Where were they while this horrendous act was done?

Children do understand the correlation of cause and consequence, you just need to make it clear to them. If my mother told me "Stay quiet or I will bust your skull" that's a perfect example of stating the consequence. The problem is that the brats believe that they will get away with it because they are kids. Oh, and don't blame the parents is not their fault that they spawned the devil's child.

Actually this ties into more of the "nature v nurture" debate. The children could possibly have still been ok, even if predisposed to "evil" if their parents had done something. Not saying it would have happened inevitably but there's always the chance, but that's under the assumption that they did nothing.

Actually, it would fall more under Operant conditioning since evil it's an ethical argument and not psychological. What for us is evil; because we are conditioned to believe so, has not quite formed on the infantile mind. A kid doesn't quite understand why is killing wrong and the more sheltered he is from the subject the more desensitized to it he will be.

[Walsingham]

Kids understand suffering. I'd hazard a guess it was hardwired in. Some kids can be absolute angels at trying to help out.

[HoonDing]

Most kids come into contact with violence from a very young age. Visit any playground at schools, and count the kids fighting. It's basic human instinct, fueled further by violence seen on TV. When I was a kid, we'd mostly emulate the A-team... later came the Power Rangers... nowadays it must be Pok

[Walsingham]

Well, yeah, I agree viru. From memory Jamie Bulger's killers grew up in neglect, as did the more recent child mutilators. I'm not for one moment saying it isn't a big part of it. Neglect isn't easy to tackle but I believe it would be far cheaper than the high security incarceration, therapy, new identities, and so on which killers receive.

 

I am, however, drawing a distinction between understanding how the evil arises and what we do about it. Certainly there is a logically consistent argument for saying the best way to triumph over the evil is to reform the evildoer but I am a utilitarian by instinct and profession. If reform represents BOTH a poor return on the investment compared with the same investment in tackling neglect- as I suggest - AND fails to adequately protect society then it is not a choice I could recommend.

[Gorgon]

I don't know. I think 11 years old is a little early to give up on kids. They obviously need to be watched closely for the forseeable future, but institutionalisation at that age... It won't solve a thing, and will cost an arm and a leg.

[Walsingham]

Freed psychopath kills again on release - another example in the press

 

I pay my taxes so I can be protected from what are essentially human predators. If attempting reform doesn't actually reform then it's not a cheaper option. It's a waste of money. Incarceration is ridiculously expensive, but very very few murderers are likely to kill me while they are still in jail.

[I want teh kotor 3]

He's right. Try to "help" these kids, with the intention of at some point de-institutionalizing them, and you'll just create the next round of Stalins and Hitlers.

 

I wouldn't go that far.

 

It was a hyperbole; I thought it was obvious, but I guess not... Oh well...

[Gorgon]

I set out to prove that you were probably being alarmist, I mean what do singular criminal acts mean to the big picture, the statistics. Not a thing.

 

 

However.

 

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11...Africa-U-S.html

 

Now granted, this is the daily mail, a tabloid not to be taken too seriously, but I assume they got their figures from somewhere. Also it doesn't specify how old the data is. Many similar search results seem to build on figures from 2001, and how relevant is that.