Yeah… I’m all for compassion and understanding, but if someone is missing the voice in their head that says “Hey, we shouldn’t be killing people” then their circuitry is broken, no matter what age they are or what their circumstances are. And that broken circuitry poses a real and present danger to everyone in that person’s orbit.
I don’t support punitive incarceration, but the general public has the right to exist with a reasonable degree of certainty that they’re not likely to encounter a cold blooded murderer on any given day, and part of ensuring that is to incarcerate people who are known to kill others, at least until such a time that we can have a high degree of confidence that they won’t be doing that again.
The person being a child doesn’t really change that part of the social contract. I promise you won’t be any less upset if someone you love is murdered by a child than by an adult.
Valid questions. Do we have firm answers to any of them? And absent firm answers, what kind of risks to the safety of the general public are we willing to accept in service of ideological values?