No, of course we shouldn't put them all down. But extreme cases like this ought to be considered carefully, and if the risk is high, we should remove these individuals from society.

To your second point, this child already almost killed someone and then bragged about it, showing no remorse. There is a very good chance he will grow up to try and commit murder again; he's too far gone. That's where the utility maximisation comes in.

And re: your point about there being a great deal of legal, ethical, and emotional complications for this kind of policy intervention, I completely agree. Good thing we're just talking shit on Lemmy, right? 😂

Utilitarianism is about maximizing the wellbeing of all. Just like how in the trolley dilemma you would leave one person to die to save 5 others. This could very well be a utilitarian justification, if the underlying assumptions turn out to be true. Generally, if those violent children can never be rehabilitated so they go on harming more humans, then it would definitely be obvious that we should put it down, as the harm done by this is less than the harm that the child would inflict on others otherwise. But if such children can be rehabilitated, there would be no harm done at all. Compared to the harm done by putting it down, it becomes obvious again that the decision to rehabilitate it is the only correct one. I, being an utilitarian, think a society whose first thought is "rehabilitate" when someone did something wrong instead of "put it down" would turn out to be of greater wellbeing.

That's just utilitarianism taken to its logical conclusion, is it not? Don't hate the player, hate the game lol.

And I agree that all of those interventions are preferable to capital punishment for juveniles. But in extreme cases where they are too far gone and are going to grow up to become killers, surely there is more we can do? Cos atm, we just let that happen and innocent people die.