The classic psychopath has a manipulative ability so uncanny, it is disturbing to spend time with them, because it is almost as though they can read your mind – for both the soft spots and the Room 101 contents. However, I would have to add that afterwards – on pausing for mature reflection – one would have to be pretty dense not to realise what that person was up to. A psychopath’s behaviour, facial expressions and consummate acting ability always give them away – and sooner rather than later.

Above all, the sense of superiority is ever-present – and this leads most of them to underestimate the enemy, i.e., anyone who wants to stop them doing anything they like. Luckily for one or two psychos, your average Lord Longford and probation officer could never be underestimated. And this is how Venables was set free, as he no longer represented a danger to etc etc etc.

Psychopathy is a relatively rare clinical, congenital and chemical condition – about which pathetically little is known. It is now accepted that a patient can develop psychopathic tendencies later in life – but only as the result of brain damage. As it happens, a study completed earlier this month by the University of Wisconsin made a breakthrough by comparing 47 imprisoned psychopaths with just such brain-damaged unfortunates.

The ‘crypto’ psychopaths had sustained damage to an area of the brain known as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region crucial to emotions such as empathy and guilt. By a process of cognitive, behavioural observation in certain ‘decision games’, the researchers were able to confidently assert that this same cortexial area is the key to congenital psychopathy.

The next step will be to develop a simple test to detect the same chemical/synapse flaw in persons found guilty of crimes involving weapons and violence. Not only might this effect a cure, it would also prevent future crime – and play an enormous role in release decisions….or indeed, what kind of institution in which to incarcerate victims in the first place.

Dare I say….it might also save us from many political names beginning with M.

But our hokey, half-asleep legal and prison systems are nowhere near any such advance. If some old bloke with thirteen letters after his name says Moats and Venables can be released, by and large they are. This is what the newly discovered paedophile sadist’s brief John Gibson said following the trial to bang Jon Venables up again:

“My client accepts his sentence, and is genuinely ashamed of what he has done.”

Bollocks. Not only bollocks, but disgraceful ignorance. Venables should never have been let out – but he should have been subjected to a more modern form of enquiry than he was. If Theresa May wants to do something really useful at the Home Office, she should fire every probation officer, and hire some good neuroscientists skilled in CBT modelling.