The fact that your title suggests that we are giving up on these exceptionally violent youths is ridiculous. Most all juvenile offenders are given repeated opportunities to adjust their behaviors before being placed in the more structured adult prisons. All four of the youths profiled in your report would be in an adult facility in Pennsylvania, and rightly so. Until the youth internalizes treatment or flat out decides that he does not want to spend his life in the custody of the state, no program, no matter how effective the juvenile program. Juvenile placements are not the panecea, nor are adult jails the bowels of hell.
Many people do time in adult facilities and never return.
It is a choice. The true problem is generally the parents. As the saying goes most nuts don't fall far from the tree, and sadly enough that is the case with most children. We should be removing children earlier than we do. The problem is that every system starts with probation and graduates to placement.