James Bulger's killers and the question of evil

There has been a furore around the two boys who murdered James Bulger over 10 years ago and whether they are innately, or instrinsically evil. There has also related argument about whether they should have been tried in an adult court.

Let me address the second point first. It seems to me that it is not the severity of the crime that should determine where the accused should be tried, but their level of maturity. If you are an adult then the crime should be tried in an adult court, whether the charge is murder of speeding. Conversely, if you are a child you should go to a children’s court, or whatever passes for that these days.

The problem is that by ‘adult’ what is really meant is ‘an adult level of maturity’. Not quite the same thing. So a severely retarded adult, or one with mental illness that significantly impairs their understanding of wrongdoing, ought to have special provision made for them. One can only be convicted of a crime if (a) a jury decides it that it is beyond reasonable doubt that you committed the offence and (b) if your level of maturity is sufficient for a jury conclude that you knew what you were doing – ie that it was criminal.

I have never met Thomson and Venables and have no expertise in child psychology. The CPS, police
and Home Secretary of the time, Kenneth Clark, decided that their level of understanding and maturity was sufficient for them to attend an adult court. However, some with experience of child crime disagree. I leave it to them to decide. Everyone wants to be an expert when these difficult cases arise; everyone wants to be judge, jury and (in some cases) executioner. All I (and you) have to go on is logic, reason, our own experience and our instinct. I will apply these principles; I can do no more.

Understanding of criminality and moral wrongdoing is not a digital (ie ‘on’ or ‘off’) mode – it is something that evolves and improves with age, or more accurately with maturity. Doubtless the two killers knew what they were doing was wrong. But they are not adults. Precocious in their level of violence and planning maybe, but not adults. My conclusion is therefore that they should not have been tried in an adult court, even though (as Denise Fergus the mother of James Bulger recently said) the crime was clearly of a severity at the more extreme end of adult offending.

I say again: an adult court is for defendants with an adult level of maturity, not an adult level of wrongdoing. I think the case that the two boys (at the time) had an adult level of maturity is shaky at best. The European Court of Human Rights agreed and denounced the trial as unfair.

There is a difference between guilt and culpability. A retarded person may be guilty of a crime – but if he didn’t know what he was doing then he is not culpable.

So the question with the two boys is not whether they are guilty of the crime – of that they most certainly are – but how culpable they are. Whether they should have been tried in an adult court is a question of fairness, linked to culpability which is in turn dependent on the level of understanding.

That brings us on to a related, more philosophical topic – are Venables and Thomson evil? I believe they were at the time, but only to the extent that a child can knowingly indulge in severe wrongdoing. Evilness is a sliding scale, and a temporary state. So their wickedness has to be heavily qualified. They are less evil, not more evil, than an adult convicted of an identical crime. A belief has spread that children who commit wicked acts must be more evil than an adult who does the same. It appals us so much that we conjecture and speculate that the level of evil is inversely proportional to the age of the offenders. It’s one way that society copes with what it cannot comprehend. I believe that the exact opposite is true; that greater maturity confers greater guilt.

But I don’t believe that they – or anyone else – is innately or intrinsically evil. No one is. No-one is born evil, not even Hitler or Stalin. A baby is not evil, it is innocent. They behaviours are moulded by their environment and the belief system they develop is either restrained or encouraged by their nature. All of us have the ability to become evil. Some people think that only acts – like torture for pleasure – are evil, and that individuals themselves can never be evil. I disagree. If someone knowingly, and with knowledge of an act’s immorality, commits such acts, then moral turpitude has become assimilated into their character. They have become, to an extent, evil. All of us are capable of wrongdoing (and all of us do it) but a level of immoral behaviour that harms others to an extremely grievous extent, with no remorse or moral equivocation shown, serves to render the perpetrator, for a while at least, evil.

I also believe that no-one is beyond redemption. Even some of the guards who worked at Auschwitz have shown remorse, understood their wrongdoing and have tried to make amends. That doesn’t exculpate them, and doesn’t remove the need for a just and severe punishment. But it does serve to remind us that no-one is beyond redemption.


Personally I think it would have been better if social services had identified these two boys as deviant and dangerous and taken them away from their so-called parents and into care – as long as that care consisted of giving them clear principles, disclipline and a sense of self-respect. Early and rigorous intervention may have prevented the atrocity.

Since this hadn’t been done, they should have been tried in a children’s court and assessed psychologically. They had to be punished with a severity commensurate with what experts decided was their level of maturity. A lengthy jail term followed by indefinite licence seems reasonable, and that’s what’s been done. At the age of 27 it’s not reasonable to continue to punish someone for something they did when you were 10. An indefinite licence is a form of life sentence. Personally I think these boys have severe psychological and mental problems and should be treated. That doesn’t obviate the need for punishment, it simply an acknowledgment that a child who is capable of torturing a child for kicks needs help as much as punishment. A mature adult also requires both, but his potential for rehabilitation is far slimmer.

The small crumb of comfort we can draw from this case is that Thomson and Venables are perhaps not beyond redemption. One of them has apparently committed a crime while out on license. Since very few people, including me, know exactly what he did it’s hard to comment. Other than to say that the success or otherwise of his rehabilitation must be reassessed and the need to protect the public outweighs the need for his rehabilitation.

A final point. The bloodlust of people who want the 2 killers themselves murdered is appalling and ironic. Pouring blood on top of blood because you’re not satisfied with the sentence? Well I’ve got good news for them: they may be satisfied after all. So many people within the prison service know the new identities of Venables and Thomson that it only takes one to blab to a tabloid or post it on the internet and the secret will be out. They may well be dead men walking. Is that a fitting legacy for Jamie Bulger?