As Children’s Commissioner my longstanding and fundamental position is that children must first and foremost be treated as such. No child should be sentenced to spend their whole life in prison, if at all, and every interaction with the youth justice system for a child should be an opportunity for rehabilitation. They need to leave the system safer than when they came in. These are important principles.
The Southport inquiry must look at all the horrifying circumstances leading to the murders of Bebe King, Alice da Silva Aguiar and Elsie Dot Stancombe and what opportunities were missed to stop this most awful crime from happening. It should also consider the sentence of Axel Rudakubana and the exceptional circumstances of his age and the nature of his crimes. Legislation should not be decided in the white heat of the horror and upset. His minimum sentence of 52 years means he is unlikely to ever be free – there is no sentence long enough to fully compensate the victims and their families for the pain and loss they have experienced.