Adolescents in adult court: does the punishment fit the criminal?

What should we do with an adolescent who has committed an act that would be a crime if committed by an adult? “Lock ‘em up.” That’s the view of my 17-year-old son, expressed over dinner as he’s about to embark on a spring vacation trip with his friends. To get permission to go, he’s been working hard to impress his mother and me with his good judgment and sense of responsibility. He thinks his judgment is as good as that of most adults, and he has a stake in proving it. If you start with the view that late adolescents think just as well as adults, then it makes sense to hold them criminally responsible as adults. But I press on: “Treat them as though they were adults for everything? Shoplifting? Fleeing the police in a high speed chase and hurting someone in an accident?” “No, those are just being stupid. It’s the difference between doing something stupid and doing something mean.” Another view of adolescents: they are more impulsive than adults, but they’re not more ignorant about good and evil. And that leads to a different view of what are appropriate interventions. How you think about adolescence has a great deal to do with what you think should be done with juvenile offenders.