The system failed this guy three times by letting him grow up in an abusive family with nobody lifting a finger, by letting him grow up in an environment with lots of crime, plenty of drugs, crappy underfunded schools, etc. And then finally by exposing them to vindictive/moralistic people insisting to convict a child as an adult.

That's an indifferent society that destroys people. Being part of that mob mentality is nothing to be proud of. It doesn't solve the problem; it perpetuates it. It's the root cause of the US having the largest prison population per capita in the world (and that's including some really nasty countries).