James Bulger killer Jon Venables to be freed

[Locutus]

One of James Bulger's killers, Jon Venables, should be released from prison, the parole board has said.

Venables was previously paroled, but sent back to jail for accessing child pornography.

James's mother Denise Fergus tweeted in response: "Venables is getting released. Just don't believe what I've got to go through again."

Two-year-old James was killed in Bootle in February 1993 by Venables and Robert Thompson, both aged 10.

The toddler was beaten with bricks and iron bars and his body left on a railway line.

It is not clear when the killer will be released.

A parole board statement said: "We've had confirmation that all parties have been told and we can confirm that it was a release decision. He will be released."


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BBC News - James Bulger killer Jon Venables to be freed

 

[Zipperfish]

Not a good idea. Sadistic psychopathy is incurable. I'm reading a book now (Thinkg Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman--great book) where the author mentions that there is a correlaation between parole board judgments and distance from lunchtime.

A disturbing demonstration of depletion effects in judgment was recently
reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The
unwitting participants in the study were eight parole judges inIsrael. They
spend entire days reviewing applications for parole. The cases are presented in
random order, and the judges spend little time on each one, an average of 6
minutes. (The default decision is denial of parole; only 35% of requests are
approved. The exact time of each decision is recorded, and the times of the
judges’ three food breaks—morning break, lunch, and afternoon break—during the
day are recorded as well.) The authors of the study plotted the proportion of
approved requests against the time since the last food break. The proportion
spikes after each meal, when about 65% of requests are granted. During the two
hours or so until the judges’ next feeding, the approval rate drops steadily, to
about zero just before the meal. As you might expect, this is an unwelcome
result and the authors carefully checked many alternative explanations. The best
possible account of the data provides bad news: tired and hungry judges tend to
fall back on the easier default position of denying requests for parole. Both
fatigue and hunger probably play a role.

In other words, parole boards are almost a complete waste of time. They should just use a checklist. If you tick yes to the question "Is the prisoner a sadistic psychopath" then it's "No parole prior to age 70."