Keigo Higashino(东野圭吾) had written a series of books about Juvenile Delinquency and one of them is, Samayou yaiba(彷徨之刃).

The only daughter of widower Nagamine, an architect, is found dead. A few days later, Nagamine gets an anonymous phone call giving him the names and address of the perpetrators. Upon entering the said apartment, Nagamine finds a snuff video in which two young men rape and kill his daughter. He waits for the murderer to return home, and stabs him to death.

Nagamine then heads out of the city to Nagano to find the other youth in the video, writing a long letter to the police about why he killed the boy in the apartment, and his intention to do the same to the other murderer when he finds him. In the letter he specifically cites the Japanese laws that fail to punish under-age criminals. This letter also is sent to the press, and is published in newspapers across the country.

While in Nagano, Nagamine tracks down the murderer. During his lengthy journey, he touches a number of people with varying opinions about the validity of his quest, including the Tokyo policemen investigating his case, and a father-daughter family unit who own an inn in which he takes refuge.

Above is a short introduction of the same name film on Wikipedia. This tragedy also throws the same question to us, whether those young criminals should be punished as adults or protected by laws for the children under 18.

In my opinion, surely juvenile has extra rights before the criminal justice system. But on the other hand, criminal characters are not supposed to be ignored. People ought to realize the wrong things they did and pay the price, no matter they are six, sixteen or sixty years old. If a young man commits a pretty serious crime, just like what happened in the book, and though he knows that it breaks the law he does it, the law should never stand by his side.