"We must condemn a little more, and understand a little less."

So said John Major shortly after the murder of James Bulger in 1993. He was speaking as prime minister, but his sentiments were also those of the man in the street.

The killing of James, aged two, by two 10-year-old schoolboys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, was one of Britain's most shocking and memorable crimes of modern times. It ranks alongside the Moors murders in the 1960s and the West killings that were exposed in the 1990s.

Police at the site where James was found dead

It also raised the profile of child crime to unprecedented levels and since then the issue has never gone off the political agenda.

Questions and theories abounded. How could two cheeky young lads who were playing truant from school, commit such a crime?

Had they been influenced by watching horror movies on video? Were they the product of growing up in a poor and troubled environment?

Robert Thompson

Or were they, as some of the tabloid press would have it, evil, scheming boys who

The memory has never faded for parents, many of whom now keep their children much closer while out on a shopping trip.
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