Pressure grows for answer to why Jon Venables is behind bars
Justice secretary Jack Straw says he has 'good reasons' for not disclosing more information about James Bulger's killer
Jon Venables
Jon Venables, who was given a new identity when he was released in 2001, was taken back into custody Photograph: AP
Pressure was mounting tonight on the justice secretary, Jack Straw, to disclose why Jon Venables, who was convicted at the age of 10 of the murder of two-year-old James Bulger, has been sent back to prison for unspecified breaches of the conditions of his release on a life licence.
The calls for public disclosure yesterday were led by Detective Albert Kirby, who led the original investigation into the murder of the toddler in 1993, who said that the public should be told what Venables, now aged 27, had done.
"I think the statement that came out last night actually raises more questions than it answers. They wouldn't, using football parlance, have given him a red card and have him go to prison for one infringement. It would help to clarify and put this to rest once and for all if the public did have some indication of what he has done."
Straw yesterday defended the decision not to give any details: "I'm sorry that I cannot give more information at this stage on the nature of the alleged breach. I know there is an intense public interest in why he has been recalled. I would like to give that information but I'm sorry that for good reasons I can't and that's in the public interest."
The home secretary, Alan Johnson, went a little further conceding that there was a "public right to know" in the case but saying that "at this juncture I can say nothing more than confirm that Jon Venables is back in custody. I believe the public do have a right to know and I believe they will know all the facts in due course. But I must in no way prejudice the future criminal justice proceedings."
His last comment prompted speculation that Venables must be facing a trial after having committed a further serious offence. But the Ministry of Justice moved to issue a clarification, saying that Johnson was referring not to a trial but to impending parole board proceedings that must be held within the next 28 days to decide whether or not to confirm the decision to recall Venables to prison.
It is not usual for the ruling by a three-strong panel, headed by a judge, to be made public but a parole board spokesman said it was likely the outcome would be released because of the high profile nature of the case.
The question of why one of the two Bulger killers has been recalled to prison eight years after he was released with a new identity and new life goes far beyond mere public prurience.
It is already developing into a trial of strength between the tabloid media, fuelled by a wave of punitive outrage on the net, and a criminal justice system striving to maintain a protective cloak of anonymity against vigilante justice.
It is important because a worldwide anonymity order places a legal duty on Straw to protect Venables's new identity, and even the barest details of what he has been involved in could lead to a jigsaw identification. But it also raises the question of how successful the much-vaunted rehabilitation of Venables and his co-defendant, Robert Thompson, has actually been.
As far as Bulger's mother, Denise Fergus, is concerned her grief will never be assuaged. But to understand how we got into the topsy turvy position of being able to name two children aged 10 and relive through CCTV footage every tormented second of their abduction of the Merseyside toddler, but not being able to discuss their adult behaviour it is necessary to go back to their original trial 17 years ago.
As now, it was usual then not to name children accused of crimes. But such was the public and media pressure on the judge, Mr Justice Morland, in a case which Tony Blair described as "a hammer blow against the conscience of the nation" that he made an exception at the end of the trial.
"I did this because the public interest overrode the interest of the defendants," he said. "There was a need for an informed public debate on crimes committed by young children." Straw is now having to live with the consequences of that decision.
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, tried to put the genie back in the bottle when he rejected the "institutional vengeance" of Michael Howard's 15-year tariff and replaced it with an eight-year term.
"We ought not to forget that, although they committed those very serious crimes, they were first of all human beings, and secondly they were children. Children can do things when they are children that they would never do in later life when they had matured," he said.
Woolf took a personal interest in the case and ensured that Venables and Thompson were kept out of the "corrosive atmosphere" of the prison service's young offender institutions. Instead, they were kept separately in local authority secure units and put through intense programmes of rehabilitation, education and psychological counselling.
It was a great success story leading to A-levels in Venables's case, and left them articulate enough about their emotions and remorse to convince a parole panel to release them on life licence.
It is breaches in the terms of that life licence which has led to the decision to recall Venables to jail. They include specific conditions such as not going anywhere near Liverpool or trying to contact each other, as well as general conditions, such as only living at an approved address or doing an approved job.
Venables may not have committed a further offence. It is sufficient for him to commit a pattern of technical breaches – such as missing a series of appointments with his probation officer – for him to be recalled to prison. The reasons for the recall could yet demonstrate all that rehabilitation work was not in vain.
