Psycho Killer

Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, is apparently well enough to be moved back to prison after thirty years in Broadmoor. Paranoid schizophrenia, apparently. Meanwhile Ian Brady remains as insane as ever, banged up in Ashworth. What has always puzzled me, however, is why we even need to know this. They are gone from the world and unless our intent is simple revenge it would have been better for pretty much everybody if they had been released early... into the hereafter. There are no doubts over their convictions, they leave no dependents, nobody would mourn them. Why are they even still alive?

Have we learned anything new about criminality from them? Or did we always understand that the human race can create aberrant and unrepentant monsters? The only way to stop people like this from continuing with their own malevolence is to contain them. Why do they want to send Sutcliffe back to prison? Because it costs six times as much to keep him in a psychiatric unit. Guess how much it would cost to keep him in a coffin? Containment, prevention... cure.

Of course, criminal psychologists love a celebrity nutjob; the book they get out of studying them could make their professional name. But why would you want to become feted for an in-depth and close-up study of such depravity? Maybe such people share some of the same character traits as their subjects – a desire for attention, a detachment from mainstream humanity, an unhealthy preoccupation with deviation? Psychopaths are known for their ability to manipulate their prey, even to gain their trust before slaughtering them. I wonder if Jeremy Corbyn understands this when he suggests ISIS can be negotiated with.

Like the Sutcliffes, the Hindleys, the Bradys and others, the criminally insane pull the wool over the eyes of do-gooders, appeasers and those who just want to teach the world to sing. Maybe this is why people like Jeremy Corbyn believe, as few really believe, there can be a peaceful resolution to the challenges posed by the Middle East’s millennia-long mass psychosis. If islam is the murderous basket case it needs to be excluded from influence in the sane world, not consulted as to how best to meet its appetites.

We need to talk...

We deny children, the demented and those who have demonstrated they don’t have the mental capacity, the making of decisions and control over their affairs because we rationally judge that no good can come of it. And yet we’re letting our uncertainly-equipped Lower House debate the ‘treatment’ for a serial killing machine operating in plain sight. Maybe they will get a book out of it? Maybe this is he proof, if more proof were needed, that the lunatics really are running the asylum.