If you ask me (I realize nobody did) the whole system of juvenile justice if f—d up.

Of course, in the US, this is one of the things that vary from state to state. I only know about Minnesota. If some other state has a better system, I'd like to know about it.

First of all, it is based on the premise that there are two kinds of people—adults and juveniles—and that a juvenile turns into an adult overnight, and this happens on his 18th birthday.

EXCEPT that if a 16-year-old or a 17-year-old is charged with premeditated murder, then the indictment retroactively converts him into an adult.

AND EXCEPT that if a 14- to 17-year old is charged with any kind of felony, then he MIGHT be an adult. The court has to decide. How they are supposed to decide is a mystery, but suffice it to say, that whenever a crime is widely reported in the media, so that people write letters to the editor saying how awful it was, there is a lot of political pressure on the prosecutor and judge to certify the defendant as an adult, and they usually comply.

—which leads to the paradoxical conclusion that people who commit more bizarre crimes—like stabbing someone 40 times with a pencil—are somehow more mature than people who commit more prosaic crimes, like shooting someone and stealing his money.