Ministry of justice to review jon venables supervi

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Postby Owzat » Sat Jul 24, 2010 7:54 am

The Ministry of Justice is to review how Jon Venables was supervised after his release from custody in 2001, eight years after he murdered James Bulger.

On Friday, Venables was jailed for two years for downloading and distributing indecent images of children.

Former Home Office permanent secretary Sir David Omand will conduct the probe, which is expected to take three months.

The arrangements for the supervision of Venables, now 27, by probation, police and other agencies will be examined.

Venables was 10 when he and friend Robert Thompson murdered James Bulger in Bootle, Merseyside, in 1993.

Venables was living in Cheshire and working in a job earning the minimum wage when the images were found on his computer earlier this year by a probation officer he had invited to his home.

It has emerged that a curfew was imposed on Venables after he was arrested for a drunken fight in 2008. Later that year Venables was found in possession of cocaine and was cautioned.

The review will seek to establish if the appropriate action was taken or if he should have been sent back to prison for breaching the terms of his licence - imposed on his release from custody for killing James Bulger.

Sentence review

Mr Justice Bean, sitting at the Old Bailey, said it would be "wrong" for Venables' sentence to be increased because of his previous crime.

But he stressed Venables would not be automatically freed after serving half of his jail term like any other prisoner and it would be for the Parole Board to determine when or if he would be released.

The judge partially lifted reporting restrictions to reveal Venables had been living in Cheshire at the time of the offences and that the case was dealt with by Cheshire Police and Cheshire's probation service.

Venables was banned from using a computer or the internet for five years and will be placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years upon any eventual release.

Outside court, James's mother Denise Fergus said "justice had not been done".

She was "surprised and concerned" that Venables had not been recalled to prison following those incidents and called for Justice Secretary Ken Clarke to investigate the actions of the probation service.

Lawyers for James Bulger's father said the authorities should have spotted earlier that there was a risk of Venables committing sexual offences.

They are also expected to ask the Attorney General to review the two-year sentence and refer it to the Court of Appeal.

Robin Makin, the solicitor for James's father Ralph Bulger, said giving somebody a false identity, as happened to Venables after he was released in 2001, was a "liberal experiment" that was never really going to work.

Death fears

It has also been revealed that Cheshire Police had produced a "threat assessment" to try to establish what could happen to Venables were his assumed identity revealed.

That assessment concluded that Venables would face the highest possible risk of being attacked if his new name was either published in the media or known elsewhere in society.

The threat assessment document said "someone could find Venables with the intention of killing him".

Venables and Thompson were released in 2001 with new identities and it was the fear that his had been discovered that led Venables to contact his probation officer.

Edward Fitzgerald QC, representing Venables, said the murder conviction had cast a long shadow over his client's life, and he had been living a "wholly abnormal" existence, punctuated by "vilification, demonisation, and threats to his life".

He said his client had held down a job ever since his release, but it had been difficult for him to form relationships with women because it was a condition of his licence that he had to disclose his true identity to anyone with whom he had a close relationship.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10748633

What p1sses me off most is the main 'concern' of the police is the safety of a MURDERER and not the safety of people who could be murdered by him. Add to that the risk he is a paedophile waiting to happen and I have to ask what is the highest priority - protecting criminals or protecting the public?

For me it's a no brainer, there's a lot more of the general public and the only way to keep watch and control of potential offenders is to lock them up - except he is not a potential offender, he is a convicted criminal (albeit the excuse of his age) I doubt most people would act on their hatred of him, but the fact that he broke his parole before sums up the stupidity of our legal system. I'd say the solution is chemically or physically castrate him, that would be a relative mild to the sentence he and Thompson dished out on poor Jamie Bulger. He didn't get three chances, he didn't stand a chance. :veryangry
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Owzat
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