from fiction, truth from diction. Though this is a UK issue because they seem at least to me try to so much like us Yankees under Uncle Sam I can see similarities. Basically it comes down to using justice as vengeance. It is not so much about trying to make sure those who go to lock up come out as better person than they went in (which seldom happens under the system in place here in the US) but to inflict equal or greater punishment or hurt upon the perpetrator based on the outrage felt by society.
The secret identity and relocation of those boys that did the killing one can just point out how the crowd reacted when they were taken away. That and maybe the UK don’t have enough stout trees where they can be just hauled out and strung up by the neck with nice strong rope (worked well here in the US for decades, many of the guilty are still among us living out their days playing bocci in the retirement home). Was it any different than the feds basically giving Sammy “The Bull” Gravano a pass by giving him just a slap on the wrist and witness protection because he turned on John Gotti and kept him from continuing to make monkeys of them? Gravano was linked directly or indirectly to the murders of 19 people; guess some of those 19 did not deserve to get justice.
Drunks on the road are rarely “outted” they pay their fine, go to their classes, pay their SR-22 insurance get back behind the wheel and drive back to the liquor store. A neighbor once asked me if I knew how many times a drunk drives drunk before they get caught. I was wrong in my answer he said he learned form his DUI class that a drink drives drunk about more than 300 times before they are caught. Drunk people with a 3,000lb 170hp land missile and no one knows who they are until they whack someone. Why? The outrage is not great at least not on a whole just at the ones dumb enough to make the news making those who didn’t get caught look bad . Another thing is that politicians are themselves offenders so they won’t take any action or toss any net they will surely be caught in.
We have these boys, they viciously beat another boy to death (when it is a toddler or baby it is certainly worse unless that baby is unborn then half the people hardly cares, it lives or dies at the whim of the mother). With all the violence in TV, in movies, and video games I am surprised harming people isn’t seen as more entertaining and more sport. Had those kids decided they were going to take the advances of their 2nd or 3rd grade teacher they would be seen as who they are. Just boys, even if they consented because they are just boys, but let them kill a toddler then everyone wants to have them treated as adults, locked up, and toss the key away (no hypocrisy there)
Justice and the penal system is woefully flawed because people want to lace it full of emotion on how liked or vilifies a perpetrator is an not carrying out the law evenly across the board.