Letting off young killers? I say no way
by gprice on Mar.13, 2010, under Responsibility
The Children’s Commissioner is saying Venables and Thompson, James Bulger’s killers, should not have been prosecuted for murder. She says a child of 10 is too young to know the difference between right and wrong, so they should have received therapy to teach them that difference. “Reparation, not punishment”, she says, “is the fairer treatment for children”.
As a psychologist with experience of child crime issues, I have to disagree. Any parent will know that if they ask their 10 year old child whether it’s right or wrong to torture and kill a 2 year old, they’d know. And I hope most would share my view that the interests of James Bulger’s parents and of a society horrified by the murder are just as important, and probably more so, than the best interests of the killers.
An argument that reparation, not punishment, is fairer for the perpetrators of crime could be applied to any criminal. Both children and adults do at each moment only what their awareness allows them to do.
For those who haven’t read my earlier posts … we all do only what our awareness allows us to do at any moment. In this context ‘awareness’ means our ways of thinking, our attitudes, beliefs, values, abilities, knowledge, subconscious programming and any other characteristics that make up who we are at any moment. We make choices of course, but the choices we make are determined by our awareness at the time.
Anyone committing a crime is acting from their awareness at the time. That awareness may well be unproductive, selfish or dysfunctional but our awareness is what it is and at any moment it’s simply a product of our life history up to that moment.
Anyone who commits murder will justify their actions to themselves at the time. Misguided though that justification might be, it’s still a product of their awareness at the time. So it could always be argued that the fairest treatment for murderers is reparation not punishment.
Two points worth making. First, while our actions at any moment are always determined by our awareness at the time, we’re still responsible for our actions. That responsibility is at least partly reflected in the consequences we bear for our actions, including any punishment.
Second, the perpetrators of crime are not the only people who matter. Victims matter too. In my view they matter more. To me the best interests of James and his parents matter more than the best interests of his killers. That’s the reason I believe it was wrong to release his killers after only seven years in prison. It took too little account of the interests of the most important people involved at the time, James’s parents. And that’s why it would have been wrong not to have punished James’s killers for their appalling actions. www.abicord.com/what-is-is
March 13th, 2010 on 12:43 pm
Raising the age of criminal responsibility is not about letting children off the hook for committing crimes. It is about not prosecuting them in a criminal court and giving them a criminal record, which will live with them for the rest of their lives.
Surely no one can say that it is right to prosecute an 8 year old for drawing on a bus shelter window with a marker pen, or criminalising a 10 year old for being used as a drugs mule by adult drug dealers.
I also do not buy the argument that at 10 years old, all children know the difference between right and wrong. The parents of some 10 year olds don’t know the difference, so what chance do their children have? If a child has been brought up in an environment where drugs and violence is common place, which is quite often the case in certain communities, there is no chance that they will think that delivering drugs is wrong, or beating up another child in the play ground is not the proper thing to do.
To my mind, the best course of action would be to extend the scope of children’s panels. Not criminalising a child does not mean they they go unpunished, or that they do not need to make restitution, but intervention, especially at such a young age should be the priority. You can’t write off a child’s future for something they done when they were 8, 10, 12 years old. As a society, we can’t give up on children. They deserve and are entitled to our support and protection. Giving a 10 year old a criminal record delivers nothing.
March 13th, 2010 on 8:28 pm
You make some fair points. Perhaps it’s unfortunate the commissioner used such an emotive case to illustrate her point. If she’d raised it at another time using some of the examples and points you’ve raised perhaps her argument would make more sense.
I find her timing particularly insensitive given the position of Jamie’s parents and the views of most people regarding the horrors of this particular crime.
The points you make could still be applied to adults for the reasons I mentioned, but I accept a cut-off has to be made somewhere. Whether it’s 10 or 12 is open to debate but the answer surely rests on the question of whether they know what is right and what is wrong. There may be exceptions as you describe, such as a ten-year-old being used as a drug mule, but in most cases I would argue a ten-year old knows and in this particular case, they surely knew, so why on earth is the commissioner raising her argument on this case.
Given the particular horrors of this case is it reasonable to argue that it’s unfair for the killers to be stuck with a criminal record. Surely what is fair to Jamie’s parents is also important.