”Locking sick people up with hardened criminals should never have been an option“

Which is why I talk about ‘whole-life detention’, Jim. Brady was held in a psychiatric facility, not in a standard high-security prison, because he was judged to be ‘insane’ (whatever that may mean). Hindley, however, was not classed as ‘insane’, so went to a prison.

We can argue the toss about what kind of detention child-abductors/torturers/murderers should be subjected to, but what is an unarguable fact, AFAIC, is that the public have to be protected from these people, and long-term detention is a proven way of achieving that protection. Until anything more sophisticated or effective comes along...’we have what we have’.

Dick talks about ‘chemical castration’, and that’s been tried before, with varying levels of success. It depends on the co-operation of the offender, something that cannot be guaranteed, and I seem to recall instances of ‘chemically-castrated’ pædophile offenders going on to offend again.