The crusty old Dean (let's call him Dean Wormer) is annoyed that cops are chasing students around campus, but he changes his tune when he finds out it was Jadon and Ezra, and even though those students represent "Hudson's commitment to diversity" he's going to expel them on the unproven allegations by these two cops. Nice. The detectives note, looking at the brothers' academic records, that they graduated high school at the top of their classes -- unfortunately, the address of said school is in prison.

A trip to "Island Academy" and a chat with Professor Steve Earle (seriously) is up next. Professor Earle says the brothers were his best students in twenty years teaching prison school, and says the boys' only crimes were "survival crimes" stealing for food or a place to sleep. "Doesn't help the victim, does it?" snarls Fin. Earle says he doesn't know where the boys are. "But once you read their files, you won't be so quick to judge them."

No, but they'll be quick to go into one of their patented squad room debates; Chester learns that the boys were shuffled in and out of foster homes -- nineteen of them, in total -- their entire lives. "The system didn't make them commit murder," says Fin. Olivia's sympathetic, and Fin inscrutably seems to be, pointing out that the boys were beaten at various stops. Cragen calls them "ticking time bombs," and Chester contends they were just kids who didn't have chance. "What are you, a social worker now?" says Elliot, adding, "Wait until you have a family of your own." Chester weirdly flies off the handle at this, demanding to know what Elliot means by that. Elliot says when Chester has a daughter Julie's age, he'll stop feeling sympathy for the mopes that killed her. Or maybe he'll still be interested in looking at the causes of crime instead of endlessly dealing with the effects, hey, Elliot? Chester gets even more upset at Elliot's implication that he doesn't care about the victim, and Cragen orders him to go cool off. "We keep it civil around here or you're gone."