While the biographies of living persons policy does not apply directly to the subject of this article, it may contain material that relates to living persons, such as friends and family of persons no longer living, or living persons involved in the subject matter. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately. If such material is re-inserted repeatedly, or if there are other concerns related to this policy, please see this noticeboard.
This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.
Murder of James Bulger is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Merseyside, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Merseyside-related articles. In so doing it works and collaborates with its mother project WikiProject UK Geography. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. Please also feel free to join in the discussions on the project's talk page.MerseysideWikipedia:WikiProject MerseysideTemplate:WikiProject MerseysideMerseyside articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject British crime, a project which is currently considered to be defunct.British crimeWikipedia:WikiProject British crimeTemplate:WikiProject British crimeBritish crime articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Death, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Death on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DeathWikipedia:WikiProject DeathTemplate:WikiProject DeathDeath articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles that are spoken on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Spoken WikipediaWikipedia:WikiProject Spoken WikipediaTemplate:WikiProject Spoken WikipediaSpoken Wikipedia articles
Noticed that too. It will be interesting to see if his new identity can be kept off circulation on the web this time around: once his breach lands in parole court I'd be surprised if it doesn't leak somewhere.¨¨¨¨
It is interesting that a spokeswoman in the cite above said: "There is a worldwide injunction in place that prohibits any reporting including reporting on the Internet, that could identify him or his location." And how's that going to work then? Wikipedia had its work cut out trying to prevent the naming of the defendants involved in the Death of Baby P. If something like this gets out on to the message boards, it can become impossible to remove (see also Trafigura). Giving the current names or whereabouts of Thompson and Venables would violate WP:BLPNAME, but other parts of the Internet are not so well regulated.--♦IanMacM♦(talk to me)19:01, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Worldwide injunction against naing them" was judicially vague even im the 1990s. today it is little more than words. If the internet server is located in some offshorte country or in Asia, there's very little that can be done and in any case names and locations would spread. It took me just a few minutes to find the name of the guy in Australia who had been claimed to be Thompson after a rape charge a few years ago. Strausszek (talk) 05:49, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The Australian claim is covered on the respected urban legends site Snopes, which points out that it was denied by the British High Commission and Australian police.[2] Unlike Baby P, the real names of Thompson and Venables are not widely known and any suggestions are speculation. As for "worldwide injunction", in 2007 it was reported that the UK government prevented an unnamed foreign magazine from naming the boys, but the injunction cannot have been under UK law, which stops at UK borders. This time round, Venables has a fight on his hands to prevent his cover from being blown.--♦IanMacM♦(talk to me)07:12, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Tweaked the wording slightly. The "worldwide injunction" phrase is sourced to the UK's Ministry of Justice. This Sky news article points out: "The legal bar on identifying them applies in the UK but it would not necessarily apply to magazines overseas." Also, today's Daily Mirror has what it claims is the reason for Venables' recall to prison. Not a WP:RS, but worth a look.--♦IanMacM♦(talk to me)08:50, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It reads better now. Interesting news item in the Mirror there. A few points:
Should Reimprisonment be "Re-imprisonment"?
I deleted a recently added unreferenced section alleging Bulger or Venables converted to Islam and lived in Haslingden. Was that a rumour then or just made up vandalism? (On another look it is 'crap' as it wasn't specifically about Venables, and nothing to do with current situation anyway.) But was this reported at all?--220.101.28.25 (talk) 10:58, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Albert Kirby
I have changed 'DS Albert Kirby' to 'Detective Superintendent Albert Kirby'. 'DS' is the abbreviation for 'detective sergeant'. BearAllen (talk) 16:36, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Crucially, it's a completely different rank and, even so, it seems unreasonable to expect foreign readers to be familiar with British police abbreviations.
I haven't the time to do it now, but reading the article yesterday I noticed a number of spelling and punctuation errors which need fixing and, more importantly, quite a number of things are repeated/duplicated. Hopefully, someone with the time and inclination can go through it and edit/re-write some of the passages. BearAllen (talk) 10:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]