Carrots and Sticks
I grew up in the Deep South and I'm fond of the very polite culture there which is at least partly rooted in the fact that it's the most religious part of the US. But please render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's.
Having literal understanding of the larger context so you can judge a person appropriately is wise. Having that touchy-feely version of "understanding" that gives people a free pass without good cause actively promotes problems.
Temple Grandin is a woman with Autism and a PhD who has authored a number of books. As a child, she was constantly in trouble in school because of her terrible social skills.
At some point, she got transferred to a new school and one day she hit someone, as she had done on other occasions at other schools and they tattled and she got in trouble and was told "We don't hit other kids."
But for the first time ever, she was asked why she hit them. They were picking on her for being weird which was probably the usual reason.
The other kid was also told "We don't do THAT." and I think they may have declined to punish Temple. This was a huge turning point for her in life and after that she tried a lot harder to go along with the rules.
On the other hand, in some court case for I believe some serial killer, the lawyer of the defendant got a Catholic priest to sit with them. A reporter or someone who later authored a book about the trial told him one day quietly "You're being used." After that, the priest showed up to sit with the defendant but without his priestly vestments. He was in street clothes.
I'm perfectly happy to try to help people resolve their personal problems who WANT to get better and are making a good faith effort and never really had the opportunity before. But some people don't really want that. They want a pass because they have an excuse with no reason to believe they will ever behave better.
I'm NOT perfectly happy to ascribe to some policy of so-called "compassion" where we err on the side of feeling sorry for monsters but not their victims where the ONLY people we CARE about are the absolute worst people who don't care about anyone else and who are all downside. Because they are still alive to cry on our shoulder and make a spectacle of themselves and their victims may not be still alive and are easily forgotten.
I think one test is: How do they treat people who are kind to them?
If they are assholes to someone being assholes to them, welp, that may be reasonable. If they are uglier to nice people than to assholes, I think the way to bet is they are abusers and they assume nice people are chumps.
Saying "Welp, you are a Bad Person through no fault of your own because of an unfortunate childhood and we are going to EXECUTE you for that or simply deny you reasonable access to the benefits of society because you are the wrong skin color or something, whether you commit crimes or not, whether there's treatment or not, whether you are trying to mitigate it or not." actively promotes problems because there's no carrot in society's carrot and stick approach to trying to get people to play nice together.
Saying "Awww poor baby! You got hit in the head as a child or have the wrong skin color! Therefore we shall ignore ALL evidence you aren't legally incompetent and you have executive function and you PLAN your crimes and we will just feel SORRY for you and give you endless second chances and shower you with endless love and compassion while you behave extremely badly!" also actively promotes problems because there's no stick in society's carrot and stick approach to trying to get people to play nice together.
Furthermore, if you have no stick to reign in the worst people, you effectively remove all the carrots for decent people.
I'm pro death penalty. While I would like to see that administered carefully, I'm not interested in warehousing people who cannot be rehabilitated and will never be anything but a drain on society's resources.
If you want to get woo or "spiritual" about it, I'm not Christian. I don't believe in heaven and hell.
I believe in karma and reincarnation and I think the best thing you can do for a monster is tell them in the strongest terms possible "Please don't do THAT." and promptly recycle their immortal soul by executing them and hope they get better parents or something next time around.
There's substantial evidence that prison rarely rehabilitates anyone and frequently grows petty criminals into career criminals because they learn the tricks of the trade in prison and then can't get anyone to hire them.
To be clear, I very much believe an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and my first blog was a parenting and homeschooling site. My understanding is that every dollar invested in preschoolers saves five dollars decades down the road in prison costs.
But once you have a bad apple: One bad apple spoils the whole barrel. Trying DESPERATELY to save one poor soul tends to have a terrible cost-benefit ratio for society as a whole.