In Liverpool, the hurt over the killing of James Bulger has never faded. Every time the grainy, black and white CCTV footage of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables leading the toddler away from The Strand shopping precinct in Bootle is played it re-opens old wounds.
Angry groups were reported gathering on the streets of Liverpool yesterday just as they did outside South Sefton Magistrates Court when the two boys, then 10-years-old, were charged with James's horrific murder in February 1993.
Then, as now, many people felt Thompson and Venables should spend the rest of their lives in prison. Others, particularly in Liverpool, had a thirst for vengeance and wanted them hanged. The national inquest that followed the killing and the awful reality that the killers themselves were children, led church leaders and politicians to discuss the reality of Britain's underclass, the consequences for children of broken families and exposure to unemployment, abuse and video "nasties".
Throughout all the soul-searching, James's parents, Denise Fergus and Ralph Bulger, wanted only one thing - that their son's killers should remain behind bars for a very long time.
It was a perfectly normal, Friday afternoon shopping outing to The Strand for Denise, on February 12th 1993. Happily walking in and out of various shops, James somehow became separated from his mother.
Thompson and Venables, who regularly bunked off school together, were walking around the shopping precinct looking for something to do that day, not something trivial, but something bad. They wanted to "get a little boy lost" they would later admit. When they spotted James outside the butcher's shop they called him over to them and he followed and they led him by the hand away from his mother.
Over a two and a half-mile walk, Thompson and Venables talked about throwing James into a local canal, but they couldn't persuade him to kneel down on the ground. At one point, James was thrown on the ground and had a bump on his head, but more than 30 adults walked by during the journey from the shopping centre to the train tracks nearby, many thinking the boys were brothers walking home. Thompson and Venables then tortured and killed James at the train tracks near Walton, before a train travelled past cutting the toddler's body in two.
Both boys were convicted of James's murder at Preston Crown Court in November 1993. Sentencing them to be detained "for very, very many years", Mr Justice Morland told Thompson and Venables that in his view, they had displayed "unparalleled evil" and their conduct "was both cunning and very wicked".
"This child of two was taken from his mother on a journey of two miles," he said, "and then on the railway line was battered to death without mercy, and then his body was placed across the railway line so that his body would be run over by a train in an attempt to conceal his murder".
With his words of condemnation echoing around the courtroom, Justice Morland sent Thompson and Venables to secure accommodation. The row over sentencing began almost immediately. The then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Taylor, recommended that they should serve 10 years, but the former Conservative Home Secretary, Mr Michael Howard, overruled the decision and set a tariff of 15 years. The House of Lords later overturned his ruling.
However, responding to a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that Mr Howard had acted illegally, the then Labour Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, announced last year that the judiciary would decide how long the boys should serve.
The decision on the future of Thompson and Venables then switched to the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf. Last October his ruling that the minimum sentences, or tariff, to be served should end immediately, nearly eight years after the murder, outraged James's parents.
"Thompson and Venables never gave James a chance," Denise Fergus said at the time. "They have got away with murder, and the lawyers and judges are bending over backwards to look after their interests."
The Parole Board was then asked to consider the case. The question facing the board, comprising a senior High Court judge, a consultant psychiatrist and an experienced independent lay member, was whether Thompson and Venables posed a threat to the public. They decided that was no longer the case.
Eight years after the murder, Ms Denise Fergus says she cannot even think about forgiving her son's killers: "The murderers have walked away with a life of luxury, have been bought homes, given a bank account and 24-hour protection. My question now is, who is going to protect my children?"