Venables & Thompson were charged and processed at the age of 10 under the prevailing UK legal system and sentenced for crimes proved thereunder. Under most other legal systems this would not have occurred at all but they would have been placed on a rehabilitation programme suitable for children under the age of criminal responsibility. There is a body of opinion which feels that the age of 10 is too low and seek to raise it. They may or may not be correct or even feasible but the point is that the legal system is there to uphold the law, not to foment revenge and retribution. This is Old Testament savagery far worse than the original offence. It is, furthermore, unhelpful to speculate on what one of these "convicted murderers" may have done while out on licence. To do so diminishes the prospect of a fair trial and is absolutely not in the interests of "justice".