well I said - incurable and un-rehabilitateable. why do you want to keep him alive if he's serving life sentence? what purpose does it serve? if he was 26 years old psychopath, would you want to sentence him to death?
If he was mentally ill as in retarded or IQ of infantile mind in adult body, then he should be committed to mental institution even for life. But there have been some cases of very young children who are perfectly normal in terms of neurological function but just lack emotion called remorse or guilt (THOSE ARE NOT SIGNS OF MENTAL ILLNESS) which is usually called a psychopath.
Those are most certainly signs of a mental illness. And if he is so mentally deficient, as to have an infantile mind, then he is incapable of having the necessary cognitive function to recognize right from wrong. In which case, he would not be convicted to death.
OR we can do it your way - institutionalize him until 18 years old and then release him. if he commits a murder, obviously he will be having a death penalty. I don't know about you but I'm not taking that chance.
If you are, once again, talking about someone who is that mentally deficient, he would be sentenced under different criteria than someone who is not mentally deficient. And most likely would be incarcerated in a forensic institute. He would not be elible for release until it could be shown that he no longer posed a threat to others or himself.
There are extensive research on this issue and the statistic has shown that a young child in juvenile jail or institution will repeat the crimes when released at age of 18 years old. This is why poor countries finally legalized abortions for this purpose - especially for wedlock babies. It was proven to reduce the crimes.
Can you cite that research, please? And the research that indicates that poor countries legalized abortion to prevent recidivism. I find both claims to be absurd.
I'm sorry but you sound like you're comfortable with having that child who got out of institution/juvenile jail hanging around with your child. :Ohno: