Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

The more we go on with this, the more I want to come back to what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said about the child in the Bulger case having a mental age of four. Of course the knee-jerk reaction in a case like that, because one is so horrified by what has happened, is to tear the little brute to pieces and feed them to the cat, or whatever. That is what one’s immediate emotional reaction should be. But if the child has a mental age of four at the age of 10, that child cannot possibly understand the meaning of punishment. So the adult reaction of tearing it to pieces and throwing them to the wolves—I exaggerate a bit obviously—seems to me to be something which we have to restrain and hold back. Of course the noble Lord is right in that that is how people react, but should we not in legislation try to rise above that if we think there is a better way to go about it?