Now the perpetrator of the ghastly Sarah Payne murder has been locked up, can we be assured a life sentence will be a life sentence?

The "liberals" who were responsible for allowing Roy Whiting an early release from the ridiculously short earlier jail sentence of four years should be named and shamed.

They are responsible for allowing a totally unsavoury, unstable and dangerous person back on the streets after serving only two years for a horrendous crime of abducting and assaulting a young girl.

If Whiting had been given an appropriate sentence and undertaken the treatment he was supposed to receive at his original trial, Sarah would most certainly be alive today.

When will these nameless and faceless individuals - and the public in general - who support the criminals rather than the victims at last realise that years of inadequate jail sentences, exacerbated by "time off for good behaviour", have allowed criminals to continue to re-offend with no regard to the consequences.

Let these people stand up and defend their decision about releasing Whiting now.

-Paul Johnston, Middleton Avenue, Hove