Child killers set to win shorter jail terms after legal challenge

Scores of child killers are expected to have their minimum terms in prison reduced after a legal challenge next month by a female prisoner jailed for murder when she was a teenager.

The challenge follows a ruling in the House of Lords in the case of the Bulger killers, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. The Law Lords ruled that sentences on child murderers should take account of the prisoner's welfare and not just the punishment.

The legal challenge by the woman, now 28, who was 17 when she murdered an elderly lady in 1991, claims that Lord Woolf failed to take account of her welfare when he reviewed the cases of nearly 200 child killers after the release of Thompson and Venables. The woman had a traumatic childhood and suffered from abuse.

The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, who has seen his powers to keep prisoners in jail severely eroded, has suffered a series of legal setbacks. Next Monday, he is likely to lose another challenge, by murderer Anthony Anderson, that the Home Secretary has no right to set the tariff for life prisoners.

The case could lead to the release of dozens of lifers who have served more than the minimum tariff set down by their trial judge. The review was ordered after the Bulger killers won a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that a judge, not a politician, should set the tariff for a child killer.

The Lord Chief Justice, in re-examining the cases, has cut sentences of more than 30 child killers. But John Dickinson, of Sheffield lawyers Irwin Mitchell, who is representing the female prisoner, said Lord Woolf had not taken account of the children's welfare, as the House of Lords had ruled.