The process of freeing the teenagers who killed toddler James Bulger has already begun. Today James’s father failed in his court bid to block their early release.
Mr Ralph Bulger had wanted the High Court to review a decision which could lead to parole in the near future for Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, who are now both 18.
They were convicted in 1993, when they were aged 10, of murdering James. The little boy was tortured and his body left on a railway track in Liverpool.
Last October, the British Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf made it clear in his judgement that he wanted the Parole Board to begin considering the future of Thompson and Venables straight away.
He set a tariff, the minimum term they had to serve in custody, which expired on the day he delivered his verdict so that the authorities could set the release process in motion.
The Parole Board held its first, private, hearing about the case on February 2nd but no details have been released. If released, Venables and Thompson are expected to be given new identities, be banned from ever returning to Merseyside, and be barred from contacting members of the Bulger family.
They will probably also have to agree never to contact each other again.
Thompson and Venables were 10 when they abducted two-year-old James Bulger from the Strand shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside, in February 1993.
The pair dragged the toddler to a nearby railway line where they tortured him and left him for dead.
The judge at their trial, Mr Justice Morland, recommended an eight-year minimum tariff for what he called "an act of unparalleled barbarity".
This original term would have expired next Wednesday - February 21st.
But in a series of moves, the tariff was increased to 10 years by Lord Taylor, then Lord Chief Justice, then to 15 years by the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard.
When the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Mr Howard had acted illegally, Lord Woolf's decision paved the way for them to be released from the local authority secure accommodation.
PA