Should James's killers be freed?

The killers of two-year-old James Bulger will hear their fate this week, as the Parole Board meets to consider freeing Jon Venebles and Robert Thompson, after eight years in custody.

Lord Chief Justice Woolf effectively ended the boys' tariff - the minimum period they must spend in custody - last october, when he ruled it would not be beneficial for them to spend time in the "corrosive atmosphere" of an adult prison.

But public opinion in their home region of Merseyside is running high with locals voting 5-1 against giving the pair their freedom.

We present here two opposing views from our region, from a psychologist and the chairman of a victim support group.

You can also have you say by taking part in our online vote here.

FOR: Lecturer in Psychology at Teesside University, Barry Sudworth, puts forward a case for Jon Venables and Robert Thompson to be released

'There are several issues that need considering. In Sweden, for instance, there are moves to encourage the populace to welcome such children back into society rather than them being locked away for the rest of their lives.

They regard it that society in itself was wrong to allow youngsters like this to be in a position where they could commit such a crime. Children are not like adults, they are not in charge of themselves. They were ten when they committed these crimes. They were not intellectually or socially competent beings.

We do not reach our maximum mental competence until we are about 14. That is the age when we can think obtusely. They would have been in the concrete operational stage.

Not everyone in the country reaches the stage of abstract thought, from which we develop intellectual competence. They think in concrete terms and need everything presenting in pictures. So the crimes the boys committed may have been committed because of the information they obtained from the people in their environment. For instance the phrase "beating someone's head in". Where some people would think this could be a smack in the teeth, they could have taken it much more literally. They may not have been aware of the real dimension of the damage they were creating.

We cannot leave these two in jail for the rest of their lives. They need to be let out before they become too conditioned to life behind bars and become classically conditioned criminals. I would have had them out earlier so they could feel they are human beings. What does locking people up do? It breeds a criminal society. We need to generate a society which behaves itself, preventing people from doing wrong in the first place.

They were normal school kids and yet this happened at the age of ten. Something was wrong mentally in order for them to do this. We need to identify what. I hope the authorities have monitored closely what has happened to them during their prison sentence; how have they developed educationally, morally?

If they are let out, they need an environment where they can be guided to make the right decisions. If they have come from a "rough" environment, then chances are they are not going to be encouraged to make the right decisions.

So I can understand people's concerns about letting "killers" out with the chance that they might commit offences just as bad as the ones they have done. That is the problem we have to address. Who are the carers going to be, the social workers, the psychologists? I am concerned that unless we have the right people and all these factors are taken into consideration, then the likelihood of them going off the rails is high."

AGAINST: Chairman of the Homicide Support Unit, June Richardson lost her four-year-old son Martin Brown to child killer Mary Bell. She puts a case against the boys being freed

'We know they are going to get out but they shouldn't. It's too early. I don't think they have been punished at all. The only ones being punished are the ones outside looking in.

Why they can't just leave them inside 15 years, like the Home Office suggested, I don't know. At least that would give the Bulger family time to grieve. James wouldn't even be an adult, he wouldn't even be in his teens and yet they are getting out. It's totally horrific.

It's sad to think that, in this day and age,the victims are completely forgotten about. People always turn their backs on victims because it never happens to them.

It's going to cost more than £1m to give them a new life, yet the parents get just £5,000 in compensation. It's an insult. The victims don't really want the money, they want their child back. But the reality is that they often need it because many can never work again through ill-health. The compensation isn't even enough to feed them for a year. It's disgusting. It's so sad that our children's lives are sold so cheap. Mary Bell got 12 years but killed two children. That's only six years each. Is that all our children's lives are worth?

I am thinking of how Denise will cope over the next few weeks, knowing they will be free but she will still be without her son, who will remain six feet under. She will not know what to do or how to change things. He has no future. She is never going to be able to smile with him or see him become an adult. Denise will be devastated, gutted, to think that this country has turned its back on innocent people.

I'm not against rehabilitation but punishment should come beforehand and they haven't been punished. Even a couple of swift years in an adult prison would have shown them that they had done wrong.

These two lads have not been punished for this crime, they have been given treats. If they are treated with kid gloves, how will they know they have done wrong. They were even allowed to see their parents at any time. They have been given special treatment. They have had VIP treatment. That is not punishment.

They should never be allowed to profit from what they have done. Mary Bell destroyed my life again by making money out of it through her memoirs. After six years they'll be able to do the same thing which will torment the family even more.

This is all the Government's fault. It shouldn't just rehabilitate the criminals, it should help the victims and put money into organisations which are willing to rehabilitate them too."

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