Retribution and Mary Bell
George Gale
On the face of it, there was something shocking in the demand raised when Mary Bell escaped from her open prison that she should be locked up for life. She is now twenty; and the crimes of manslaughter for which she is imprisoned were committed when she was aged eleven. Now I know that at twenty I myself was not the same person I was at the age of eleven, and that things I would have done when a child I would not do as an adult. The reverse is also true. I see no reason necessarily to suppose that someone who was a monster as a child should remain a monster as an adult.
Bullying, for instance, is commonplace among children; and it certainly continues among teenagers and young adults. I recall an incident of physical bullying at university, and among the perpetrators were those who would now be aghast to find themselves, in middle age, acting as they did in their youth. But most bullying, to the best of my own recollection, took place between infancy and adolescence. I am not suggesting that Mary Bell's crimes were simply a kind of bullying writ large: but it is clear that, like bullies, she took pleasure from the infliction of pain. Unlike bullies, she went on to kill. Bully boys and girls stop well short of manslaughter — but as often as not they will torture and kill animals, particularly those unpleasant to them.
Bullies generally grow out of all this, although I do not doubt that if the political situation (for example that in pre-war Germany) is appropriate those who were bullies as children will be able to find satisfactory employment , as adults running concentration camps. When we look about us and see the bullies of the picket lines and demonstrations we see clearly that not all of us grow out of our childhood's nastinesses and that adult bullies will always find for themselves objects for their hate. We also see, looking about us in 6 different direction, that many of us degenerate from what we were as children. Experience thus suggests that, for the most part, people mature out of their childhood's nasty ways, while at the same time degenerating into the nasty ways of adults. Most childhood's nastinesses were venial; and most adult degeneration is gradual and slight: but there is change as well as decay in all around we see, and some of that change is for the better.
So when we observe Mary -Bell, and ask whether she should be kept locked up for ever, what do we observe and what is it that is demanded? None of us can know what manner of girl Mary Bell has become, except, perhaps, a handful of her fellowprisoners, a warder or two, possibly a doctor. She herself is reported to have been shocked at discovering, following her escape, that so many people regarded her as a dangerous monster; according to these reports, her memory of her trial and the events that caused it had become vague and blurred. This would not be surprising. It seems that, during her brief days of freedom, she met a couple of men, got drunk and lost her virginity. And this is not at all surprising. 'Presumably she had had no experience of alcohol at all: it wouldn't take much, therefore, to make her drunk. A great deal of the conversation in prison and a good deal of the behaviour had doubtless to do with sex, and a Mary Bell at twenty would naturally be ready and willing to catch up on what she probably thought of as her lost and wasted years. She now is back inside, and maybe somewhat wiser and possibly somewhat better for her taste of freedom.
Allegations have been made, by those quite unqualified to make them, that she is a psychopath. This is a very loose kind of word, suggesting mental disorder and emotional instability and a susceptibility to impulsive and often criminal behaviour. The theory of some who use the word seems to be, once a psychopath always a psychopath. I do not know what force this argument has in medical circles. Obviously each of us is born with an inalienable genetic set-up which equips us with physical, mental and psychological attributes. Equally obviously, these attributes do not prevent us from changing our behaviour, attitudes, ideas and beliefs as we move through our days and years. All of us who are not entirely vegetable are capable of learning and of profiting from past mistakes. We do not put our hand into fire twice unless we like getting burned or wish to do a fakir stunt. However, I accept that there may be people who are so deranged that, for the protection of the public, it is necessary to keep them locked up for life. For the purposes of this argument, however, I am assuming that Mary Bell is not such a person. I know of no evidence to suggest that she is. Her removal to an open prison forcibly suggests that the authorities who have actually been observing her in prison do not consider her a dangerous person. What she actually did during her days of freedom suggests that she has become a commonplace young woman with a disastrous past. What, then, to do about her?
Let us briefly consider a different case: that of Myra Hindley. The Moors murderess committed her crimes as an adult. Those who have heard or read the transcripts of the tape-recordings she and her lover and accomplice, Ian Brady, made while tormenting their victims will not find it easy to envisage any circumstances whatever to justify freeing Hindley, let alone Brady. Even if Myra Hindley had truly repented and were now a genuine convert to Christianity, and even if everyone were agreed that she no longer represented any danger whatever, I myself would see no case for releasing her. To do so would be an affront to the parents of the children she killed; and it would also be an insult to the sense of outrage the country feels.
The question is, then, this; should Mary. Bell be treated like Myra Hindley (always supposing, as I do, that the parole board will not dare to recommend Hindley's release, if only because its members are shrewd enough to realise that the public reaction to such a recommendation would be to put the board out of business. This apart, Sir Louis Petch and his colleagues cannot but share the public's abhorrence at the Moors murderers.) I cannot think that the crimes of an eleven-year-old can properly be compared, as to moral guilt, with the crimes of an adult. So, even if Mary Bell's crimes were as abhorrent as Myra Hindley's, it would not follow that, because I think Myra Hindley should be kept locked up for life, so should Mary Bell. And I assume that a freed Mary Bell would not represent a danger to the public, and that she has changed, for the better, from the child she was. Should, then, she soon be freed? She has been imprisoned for nine years, and in the nature of things the question of her parole cannot be evaded for long (although her escapade may delay it for a year or more). She would not have been executed, had the death penalty been in operation: so, should she not be released at an appropriate time, much as she would have been, were she not so notorious?
In a sense her notoriety is at the heart of the matter. It ensured vast publicity when she escaped. We may be quite sure that her release on parole would secure at least as much publicity again; and that this would be augmented when the inevitable serialisation of her life-story became published in one of the Sunday papers. Her plight is such that any brush with the law, or a marriage, or a job — in short, any activity on her part which came to the attention of the newspapers — will be treated sensationally. The extreme difficulty she will face living overground, as it were, when considered • alongside the almost entirely criminal acquaintanceship she has known for the past nine year's, suggests the probability that she will join the underworld. The life one most readily envisages for Mary Bell is that of prostitution and petty crime. However, even if it were virtually a cast-iron certainty that this is what she would turn to, this in itself is no reason for withholding her release.
The publicity is a different matter. Her release will signify, to many people, that she has somehow paid for her crimes, that her guilt has been expiated, that society has now forgiven. This might be acceptable if society had also forgotten. But clearly it has not. And here, the public interest has to be set against the interest of Mary Bell. Even if, other things being equal, she was fully entitled to parole, should she be given it if the effect of such a parole would be to horrify a large section of the public, antagonise it towards the lenient authorities, and accordingly reduce respect for the law? If the public were generally satisfied that the authorities were not excessively lenient in paroling and excessively soft in sentencing, then the release of Mary Bell, despite the furore it would undoubtedly occasion, could be carried off. But a great part of the public, possibly its majority, thinks the authorities are too lenient, especially towards crimes of violence. Much the same part of the public also believes that the authorities display much more concern with the well-being of criminals than they do with that of their victims. We constantly hear of rehabilitation (although not a great deal of it actually seems to happen), as if the chief purpose of imprisonment was to rehabilitate. It is not. The chief purpose is to punish, to discourage others from crime and to mark society's abhorrence of the criminal's act by exacting retribution.
Mary Bell may have already been sufficiently punished for acts committed when she was a child; and she may well have changed from the child she was. But her crimes remain abhorrent. She might kill again. We are surrounded with increasing violence, and that violence is being increasingly committed by the increasingly young. It is essential to use punishment to discourage the young from violence; and it is essential that retribution be seen to be exacted as much as justice be seen to be done. Retribution is, indeed, an ingredient of justice. I think the public interest would best be served by keeping Mary Bell in prison. I also think, however, that such a decision would be a very hard and difficult one for the appropriate authorities to take. Whatever they do, they will be criticised. Whatever they do will occasion great publicity and heated debate. Personal inclination must be to set her free; but public duty would keep her in. Sometimes — and more often than it usually does these days — justice must present to the public its most stern and unyielding face if the public is to be satisfied it has not gone soft in the head. A hard case is wanted: hard cases can sometimes be good for the law.
But I do not fully convince myself, (although I see the need for retribution and how the public interest would thereby best be served) that Mary Bell should be locked up for ever, or even for very much longer. This lack of conviction springs entirely from the fact that she was only eleven when she killed. Only eleven? I am being unduly sentimental. Eleven-year-olds know perfectly well what they are doing. Were the authorities to steel themselves and keep her locked up, they would win my praise but not my affection; and I believe that the public would react with general relief and a shrug, saying: so be it.
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