"I don't, frankly, give a shit how old they are"
And thereby hangs the problem here - you damn well would if it were your own children, and quite rightly, or are you happy to tell us that you would be prepared to see one of your own go to the drop without protest?
"Child murderers are not rehabilitated"
Can you give us a precedent for claiming this? They aren't exactly ten-a-penny - Mary Bell was rehabilitated; should she have gone to the drop? I can't think of one who went on murdering - can you?
I would lose as much sleep at the idea that we had moved back to the barbaric practice of ritual state killing - gone forever - and the idea of killing ten-year olds fills me with disgust. Predicting who are likely to be the criminals of the future is the stuff Tom Cruise films are made of.
They were ten when they killed and were punished as children, rightly if we are going to remain a civilised country.
Any crime they commit now will be treated as adults - equally rightly.
All this has the disturbing ring of cutting the hands of thieves and stoning unfaithful wives - effective maybe, but......!!!
I agree with Lively - children have many things thrust on them by the adult world which they should not have to cope with - to abandon them, and to punish them for succumbing to them is not only washing our hands of the responsibilty of our own shortcomings, it is cowardly and inhuman.
Jim Carroll