Justice
I was really pleased to get an email from Premier Radio today, asking if I’d be able to take part in their debate on the Premier Drive show. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to, but they might have used some of the blog anyway. Apparently, they were discussing the Jon Venables case that I blogged about here yesterday. I’ll try to catch the debate on their catch up service when I can, but I hope it was interesting.
The Bulger case is really emotive for most people who were around at the time or know much about it. I was a child when the murder happened (I’m only a couple of years older than the boys who killed Jamie), but I remember Jamie’s mum appealing for people to help find her son, and then to help find his killers. I remember the trial and Michael Howard’s, intervention which reduced the age of criminal responsibility to ten, so that the two boys could go to prison. By the time I was studying for my degree, this case had completely changed the way that children and young people were dealt with in the UK – in everything from law and the media to parenting.
Well, watching the footage of people proclaiming judgement on Venables over the past few days on the news, I’ve been amazed to see how one case can so affect society’s idea of justice. Numerous people have been calling for his life to be ended while I’ve been watching.
I guess I’m saddened but unsurprised by people’s inability to see past their (justified) anger and take a stance founded in real justice. ’Street justice’ is a devoid of justice and I’m thankful for the relative temperance of law in the current situation. There is obviously a huge emotive punch that comes from knowing that a vulnerable child has killed an even more vulnerable child, but this emotion should not guide our judgement.
It seems that, while a mother might be allowed the right to proclaim her grief-fuelled anger, the rest of us must, surely, need to temper our justice with mercy. If we do not, we must have to expect the fair judgement of our own acts, with no mercy. Who would survive in that situation?
And, if we use this mercy, within the confines of justice, might it even lead to forgiveness? A friend texted me today with a great phrase:
Forgiveness releases the Forgiven and the Forgiver
I think that there will never be justice in this lifetime. True justice would demand all our lives. In the end, I believe, justice can only be in the gift of somebody free of fault, so I’m thankful that that’s how my God revealed himself.
05.03.2010(21:39)
As you’ve rightly observed Jon, this case was troubling from start to finish. From the act of murder itself, to the realisation that another 2 young lives would effectively be lost, it posed so many questions about how our society functions, and sometimes fails.
Did Venables and Thompson go out with murder in mind? I doubt it. The fact is that a sequence of events started, got out of hand, and neither child had a developed enough sense of right or wrong to know when, or how, to stop them. Of course we know how this disastrous episode ended, but the question of whether, after 17 years, justice has now been served, it’s just too big for us. This is not, and never will be a black and white case of ‘life or death’. For Venables and Thompson, they will never again experience a life of normality and freedom. The media, and narrow judgement, will see to that. It’s a sad, sad situation.