When kids lie about stealing a cookie, they don't feel bad like an adult. Kids' egocentrism helps explain why they can do something they know to be wrong, immediately try to cover it up, but then fairly quickly get back to the business of being children. Hence after they left Bulger on the tracks, Venables and Thompson went into a video store near Thompson's house and watched cartoons on the telly. Bell reasons that what those boys are alleged to have done may not necessarily be so abnormal. This could have been some real innocent stuff.
Kids throw rocks all the time.
But most kids don't have this inability to control themselves in the real world. The 20 or so U.S. kids under 10 who are arrested for committing homicide each year are abnormal, in other words, but they're abnormal in a much more childish way than we admit when we pretend they had criminal intent and charge them with murder. Some very young kids don't even understand they're being punished. They wonder where their cheeseburgers are. It's also crucial to realize these kids will get out someday.