Booze and teens mixed reasonably well in my life and in the lives of my contemporaries, and in the lives of my son and his contemporaries. Not always, but by and large. I think booze and teens probably mix better than cars and 16 year olds.
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As for "Joining the army doesn't destroy brain cells" - actually it can have precisely that effect, unfortunately. All depends where the kid gets shot.

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As I understand it the law here would have been precisely the same if these young people had all been 20.
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I won't dispute that in the setting it was a stupid thing to have a party like this, just as it would have been in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. You have to take some account of the customs and restrictions of the society in which you live.

But even allowing for that this was a shockingly brutal sentence. It appears that the parents were offered a 90 day sentence if they had pleaded guilty in a plea bargain - their penalty for fighting the case was for that to be increased to eight years. This was achieved by multiplying together the maximum laid down for the offence by the total number of young people involved. Eight years, reduced on appeal to 27 months. I suppose they should be grateful it wasn't increased...