My twopennyworth. I wrote a post recently about the making of monsters, and one thing we, as society, forget is that the children who inflicted that horrific death on Jamie Bulger were a product of their upbringing. They did not come from well-balanced, loving homes, with consistent parenting.
To typify them as monsters is one thing, and what they did was monstrous, but as a society we don't approve of murder or mutilation whether done by individuals or by the state. So, justice was done in the best way we, as flawed humans, know how, and an attempt was made to rehabilitate two damaged boys.
I'm really sad that it doesn't seem to have worked in the case of John Venables, but a lynch mob mentality won't help anyone.
When people are hurting (and I have no doubt that the pain of losing a child to murder is one that never stops) they often ask 'why?' Actually, I've never met anyone who found that knowing 'why' made any difference to the pain - it is unreasonable and unresponsive to logic and explanation - it just is, and it hurts.
Our duty as society is to attempt to protect others from harm, punish and rehabilitate the guilty, and comfort the hurting. What we can't do is decide on the basis of one person's opinion, what is best for society as a whole, so no,I don't think JB's mother's views on JV's crimes of today should hold sway.
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Winter Solstice Ceremony
1 day ago
well said Helen, you put my thinking into words for me :-)
ReplyDeleteI quite agree.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that I always remember from the media coverage was that when those 2 young boys went into prison they gained an extra 30% body weight. That alone spoke volumes about their backgrounds.