Bruce has never advocated that 'killers and sickos' should run around. And given that 'the moral high ground' is what keeps him from effectively playing God - him and the other heroes - I find it hard to blame him.
I'm sorry for not making myself clearer. I don't blame Batman for never using lethal force or killing. What I do object to, is him protecting them. Two-face and Joker have both killed/ come within ace of killing Robins that he considers his "sons". And yet, how many times has he saved the Joker from getting his just desserts? There have been times when even Gordon has begged and pleaded with him to just let the Joker die from the wounds circumstances he'd bought upon himself. And yet, he's saved their lives time and time again, for no other reason than his own ideal of "justice". Maybe it's a personal preference, but in protecting them he's also responsible for the lives that these criminals have goe on to end and destroy.
Worse, he's passed it down to his students. Tim nearly gave up being Robin because he thought he'd accidentally killed Johnny Warren (regardless of the fact that it was while trying to stop him killing Stephanie). And in two barf-worthy story arcs, Nightwing alienates himself from everyone and nearly kills himself with guilt - once, for nearly killing the Joker in revenge for Robin's presumed death and the other for letting Blockbuster take a bullet after he'd pretty much killed everyone in Bludhaven remotely close to Dick. Feeling regretful I can understand; trying to destroy themselves from guilt...just, no.
That's an argument Bruce can't win. Either he refuses to take on the kid and orders him/her home, and that means he's an authoritative, self-entitled asshole, either he does accept them and start training them, and that means he's endangering children.
Likewise, I never faulted him for training the Robins. No matter how much they pestered him, it was clear that he would never have taken them on unless he saw the required aptitude for the mantle and they proved themselves to him after intensive training.
However, after having rebuffed her numerous times and stopping her training as Spoiler altogether, he took on Stephanie as Robin purely to lure Tim back. And while he put Tim through a year of training and sent him abroad before he so much as let him go out as Robin on his own, Stephanie barely had more than a few weeks. He didn't even tell her, his so-called Robin, his true name! Whether consciously or not, he set her up to fail from the start, giving her just enough training to make her dangerously overconfdent in the process.
As far as I'm concerned, Stephanie's death is entirely Bruce's fault, and I have yet to hear him acknowledge it as such. It seems that he and his cohorts would take on the guilt for the death of an enemy more readily than the deaths of his own charges.