Since other juvenile offenders are likely there for lesser crimes, maybe we should be worried about other juvenile offenders.
I can totally see why you would make that statement. But I think it comes from the premise that juvenile offenders are similar to adult offender populations and they just are not.
My knowledge of the juvenile justice system (my law partner defends a lot of juvenile defendants) and of. Hold development tells me that. There will be very few children this kid's age in juvenile detention. Most will be older, more seasoned, with a definite pattern of criminality. It takes a lot before they actually end up in "juvvy" because there are so many diversion programs and second chances for these kids. So you have some of the worst of the worst there.
Many of the kids there are hardened gang criminals. They have coldly robbed, jumped And some have then murdered. Most children under 14 who engage in such vicious murders against family tend to come from seriously troubled backgrounds and often have mental health histories. Most have experienced significant abuse. That is not the case if, however, they calmly target unrelated children they do not know well. Those tend to be a scarier, predatory and more sociopathic breed.
And most sociopathic types begin with things like fire starting and animal abuse before targeting unrelated, small children.
And iN fact, in the case of children this age who committ murders and are later released, I can't think of one who committed another murder. Even those kids who murder strangers.
The brain of a 12 year old child is simply vastly different in terms of understandings about consequences, permanency, grief, impulse control, emotional stability, etc., than that of an older child/teen.
It's easy to start screaming that a child who does something as horrific and evil as this is a sociopathic monster. I actually think in the vast number if these cases, when the child is under 14, they are not. They have either sociopathic leanings that can still be undone or they have killed for reasons unrelated to psychopathic tendencies. IMO.
But if we don't get such kids help, well, we could have more problems in the future.