Star comment: Shed no tears for Mark Bridger

After abducting five-year-old April Jones in Machynlleth and then murdering her in a horrific crime, he did his utmost to avoid justice.

April's parents have still been denied a body or remains over which to grieve. Bridger claims not to remember what happened, but he had his wits about him enough to ensure that she simply disappeared. The implication of the evidence at the trial is that poor April was burned to destroy all trace of her.

While serving his life sentence, in which he has been given a whole-life term, Bridger was slashed across the face by a fellow killer in July last year. Many people will feel that his subsequent claim for compensation and his request to be moved to a different jail were an affront.

In any event, both his requests have been refused. He will remain at the high security Wakefield prison, among all the others at what has been dubbed "monster mansion", and will do his time fearing for his life and safety.

He continues to have a life, something that he denied April. Her future was taken away from her. Her loved ones had April taken away from them.

Many right thinking people will feel it is grotesque for Bridger to attempt to make demands on the system. But we should be very careful about letting hatred for a vile child killer take us in the direction of condoning a prison system in which brutality between prisoners is either implicitly condoned or ignored.

There are a lot of sick people in these jails and if society's message to them is "go ahead, slash a paedophile, they deserve it," then the whole system will have been turned back to medieval times, and humane and civilised behaviour will have been usurped, not by "people's justice", but by the so-called justice meted out by psychopaths and sadists.

If there is to be a lawless free-for-all within the prison walls to administer what some people may feel is more appropriate justice than incarceration itself, we may as well have the prison officers going into the cells every night beating people up.

So Wakefield jail and the prison system do have questions to answer.

And anyone who thinks Bridger's attacker is some sort of avenging hero should know this. He brutally stabbed to death a mother-of-three in her own home.