Watch out, this one's pretty serious!

In early 1993, two 10-year old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, kidnapped 2-year old James Bulger at a Liverpool, England shopping center. James’ mother had gone into a butcher’s shop, and as she was placing her order, the toddler, as toddlers are wont to do, toddled off. In a time span of what was likely less than a minute, Thompson and Venables approached the child, took him by the hand, and led him away. His mother, panicked but assuming he had merely found his way to another part of the mall, frantically roamed the grounds looking for her son. Eventually the police were called, and a search of the shopping center and its immediate environs was undertaken. By this time, however, the two older boys and their victim were long gone, having embarked on a miles-long journey across Liverpool, which concluded at some railroad tracks. There, Thompson and Venables beat Bulger to death with bricks and an iron bar, leaving his corpse on the tracks. When the little boy was discovered, his body had been severed by an oncoming train.

This case was and continues to be a media-fueled sensation in England, and the sensation inspired public outrage, outrage that I believe was unwarranted. Don’t get me wrong. One can hardly blame the little boy’s parents for wishing the two older boys dead; this is the stuff that parental nightmares are made of and if James’ mother or father hunted down the murderers and did to them what they did to James, it would be perfectly understandable. The rest of the world, however, should be a little more charitable.

We should be charitable because we all know that kids are dicks. Whenever I would come home from school telling tales of the psychological torture inflicted upon me by my classmates, my parents would say, “Kids can be so cruel.” I heard this phrase pretty regularly since my childhood interests – silent films, Agatha Christie novels, and synchronized swimming – were considered highly mockable. I wouldn’t necessarily say I was bullied, but I was daily indicted on charges of unforgivable weirdness, with accusations of corpulence leveled periodically, just to spice things up a bit. I’m providing this background by way of explanation. You see, I’ve never much bought into the notion of children as unspoiled angels. Kids are little assholes. A perfectly normal kid will say and do things a normal adult would NEVER do. Things a normal adult, the sort of adult these normal kids will one day become, would consider immoral and unethical. So when I hear about two kids beating to death another kid, I’m not shocked.

Now I’m in no way likening the verbal nastiness I endured to the grotesque and violent death of James Bulger, but I am suggesting there’s a common source. Kids are not the same as adults. As obvious as that sounds, it’s hard for most of us to grasp. We forget what it’s like to be a child. We forget what a bewildering world this is to the uninitiated. More than anything, we forget how fucking stupid kids are. They’re bad at thinking. That’s why we’re legally obligated to look after them, at least until their brains are mostly developed. So just how sure are we that kids are truly able to grasp the impact of their actions? Probably more sure than we should be.

This case, which was tried in an adult court, was not a whodunit. There was no doubt that Thompson and Venables directly caused the death of James Bulger. Kids, stupid as they are, make terrible criminals. They don’t consider witnesses – 38 people reportedly saw two older boys dragging a tearful younger boy across Liverpool on the day of the murder. In addition to accumulating virtual armies of witnesses, kids also make no attempt to cover up or remove from the scene forensic evidence, tending to leave behind hair, blood, fingerprints, footprints, and basically everything else that could possibly link them to the crime. Finally, youths are easy to break. Police are wildly successful at eliciting both true and false confessions from children, because children can’t lie for shit. Given how often they do it, you’d think they would hone the skill pretty early on, but apparently not. Then again, considering that a good lie requires forethought, a trait not commonly found in the pre-teen set, it’s not surprising that their fairy-tales collapse almost instantaneously. Caught in their lies, trapped in a corner, kids confess.

So went the story of Thompson and Venables. Having been captured with Bulger on security cameras at the shopping center (I told you kids are shitty criminals), they boys were brought in for questioning only days after the murder. Both told a whole slew of fantastically unconvincing lies, both were called out by the cops, and both ultimately confessed; it was reported at the time that Venables was remorseful while Thompson evinced no guilt or concern for the suffering of the victims. Armed with two confessions and all the evidence in the world, all the British criminal justice system had to do was determine the appropriate punishment, the determination hinging on whether or not the kids fully understood that their actions were wrong.

This is where things get tricky. Of course the kids knew that beating to death a baby is wrong. Despite being habitual truants, both Thompson and Venables were regarded by their teachers as bright, and both were academically successful during their detainment. Psychiatrists, when asked whether or not the kids were aware of the wrongness of their actions, unanimously answered that they did. The mere fact that they lied in their police interviews speaks to their awareness, and I have no doubt that, had you asked them if killing a kid is wrong, they would have said yes. The question is whether that’s especially meaningful, and I would argue that it’s not. That a kid by the age of ten has come to the realization that society frowns on murder is not impressive. Even stupid children are cognizant of the major societal mores, but that doesn’t mean they’ve developed an internal sense of right and wrong. That, coupled with a youthful lack of impulse control, can lead an already-troubled kid down a pretty scary path.

Many normal kids are basically mini-sociopaths. They have a scaled-down sense of fear, and believe they’ll get away with all sorts of things no one ever gets away with. Their ability to control themselves is virtually nonexistent. When they’re frustrated they throw tantrums, when they’re sad they cry, and when they’re angry they lash out. Most importantly, they’re only in the concrete operational stage of cognitive development as defined by Piaget, and that’s the best case scenario. If they’re extra stupid, they could still be piecing through the preoperational stage.

What this means is that the level of egocentrism displayed by a normal child is decreasing at age ten, but it could still be playing an active role in his brain. The more egocentric the individual, the less able he is to empathize, and the less able an individual is to empathize, the less able he is to fully comprehend the effect his actions have on other people. A violent youth might not even entertain the notion that his victim is a human being capable of feeling pain, or the fact that death, generally speaking, is permanent. Additionally, even when their childish egocentrism has largely faded, kids are unlikely to be able to apply their newfound powers of empathy to abstract or hypothetical situations. In murdering James Bulger, Thompson and Venables manifestly failed to put themselves in the shoes of the little boy or his family. How could they when such a situation would have been purely hypothetical? They’d never been murdered, nor had they ever had kids who were murdered. Asked after the fact if the little boy’s mother was sad when her son died, I’m sure both would have responded in the affirmative, but I doubt either would have ever considered the possibility without prompting.

The vast majority of kids, like the vast majority of adults, will never commit a serious act of violence, but in the kids’ case this most definitely is not indicative of a strong moral compass or the ability to empathize. They don’t murder because they don’t especially want to, and not because they really GET why they shouldn’t. The only thing that set them apart from millions of other kids their age is that Thompson and Venables wanted to move past schoolyard bullying and engage in extremely violent activities. Both were known to be disturbed long before the murder; Venables, widely considered to be the less evil of the two, once attempted to choke a classmate with a ruler.

That being said, there’s no reason to believe that with the maturation of the brain and all that comes with it (e.g. the increased ability to empathize and control impulses) Thompson and Venables wouldn’t be able to become perfectly non-violent adults. In fact, neither was considered to be behaviorally problematic while in juvenile detention, and neither has been accused or convicted of a violent crime since they were freed in 2001. Venables, who, like Thompson, was given a new identity upon his release, was recently returned to prison on charges of possessing and distributing child pornography. However vile this may be, it’s indicative of a whole other set of problems and could very well be only peripherally related to his violent past.

Ultimately, although I disagree with the court’s opinion that the boys were fully aware of the evil nature of their actions, I think the imposed sentence was fitting. For their own protection, no details of the boys’ period of incarceration have been released; such information could compromise their new identities. However it is known that the boys served time in detention centers vastly different from adult prisons. Such centers provide residents with therapy, schooling, job-skill development, and recreational activities. Through good behavior, kids can earn privileges (e.g. in-room TV, supervised outings, etc.) which are rescinded if the good behavior deteriorates. In essence, troubled juvenile delinquents, many of whom have never known structure and stability, are transferred to an environment conducive to their mental and physical development. The recidivism rate is remarkably low.

The British public by and large disagrees with me. The general consensus over there appears to be that the sentence should have been penal, rather than rehabilitative, in nature. Why they think the world should have given up on a pair of children, I don’t know. Rehabilitation doesn’t do much for adults, but kids are a different story. Their stupidity, potentially harmful in some respects, can work to society’s advantage. Kids are easily manipulated, hugely influenced by their surroundings, and generally able to transform into wholly changed people.

The Brits also seem to be of the opinion that the boys’ 8-year sentences were too short. Although they were released only when their respective parole boards had deemed them unlikely to re-offend, I suppose that failed to satiate a vengeful public. The fact that Venables’ life since his release has been plagued with substance abuse, and that he’s once again incarcerated has been used as proof that the boys were released prematurely. This is patently untrue. Thompson, his location and new identity still unknown, has not been in trouble since his return to society nearly a decade ago. Venables’ case is obviously not so simple. During the trial, it was noted that Venables was deeply troubled by his crime, and anyone who’s ever experienced feelings of intense guilt can understand why a person, particularly one whose guilt is actually and completely justified, would turn to drugs and alcohol. Where the predilection for children came from, I don’t know, but it certainly doesn’t mean he was unfit to be released nearly 10 years ago. It was determined that he was no longer a violent threat to society, and the presence of child pornography on his computer doesn’t render that determination somehow untrue. Does he belong back in prison? Absolutely. Does that mean he should never have been released? No, unless Britain is interested in un-civilizing their society.

And by the way, a lot of this applies to the cognitively disabled (formerly known as mentally retarded). Their reasoning powers are equivalent to those of a child, so they are not as responsible for their actions as the rest of us. If the punishment should fit the crime, executing the intellectually disabled, whether or not it violates the US Constitution, is not OK. I can’t believe that’s a bold stance to take in this day and age, but then again we live in a world that believes criminal children should be locked away for life, so I guess I’m nothing but a bleeding heart.

I told you I had a lot to say about the culpability of children…