10:22am Thursday 11th March 2010
By Reader's letter
Heather Causnett (Public anger is part of punishment, Letters, March 8) has unwittingly made the case for giving the killers of Jamie Bulger new identities on their release from prison.
In her blinkered view, people who exact “retribution”, as she calls it, against Venables and Thompson, are acting “quite rightly”.
She clearly has no idea why we have a criminal justice system in this country with police, courts and prisons to act on our behalf.
Does Ms Causnett really want us to live in a society where the law is left in the hands of anyone who feels that they know better than the legal system, and that people who have committed serious and terrible crimes can be punished by any passing vigilante who feels their prison sentence wasn't long enough? Subsequently trying and convicting the vigilantes isn’t “another story”, as she puts it, it’s the whole point of having a rule of law.
As for the cost of giving this pair new identities, Ms Causnett seems unaware that keeping someone is prison is expensive. Or maybe she thinks we could save on prison buildings, wardens, cells, CCTV cameras and so on, if we just left convicted criminals to “fight their own battles” with the public.
Patrick Kelly, East Mount Road, York.
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