This. A million times over. Crimes often sound bad. Then take what most people who get convicted DID. Take juvenile "justice". Crimes vs what child potentially really did:
Kidnapping: running away from parents that hit you. Helping someone else run away from their parents, or running away and taking your brother/sister (because you don't have the right to take yourself or anyone else away from parents). Can also be "removing from parental control", which is also a crime (if you manage to get help, those people can also get convicted)
(same for running away from an "open" child protection institution if you don't agree with their treatment of you (which is quite likely the case I might add), even running back to your parents.
Stealing: taking anything. Even your own stuff of course, as children don't technically own anything.
Drugs: much the same. But standing in the street while kids inside a house are doing drugs, even if you're clean, is drug use too (or at least conspiracy to ...). Child protection services have been known to ask to convict children for drugs because their parents or friends did drugs, EVEN if those parents were not convicted/were innocent (they can, because there is no burden of proof for them. After all, they’re “protecting” children, “not punishing them”) (usually because the parents didn't agree with doing whatever CPS wanted them to do, and this is a way to force parents into compliance, usually to "place" (lock up) the children (which results in a LOT of extra subsidies for CPS, which I’m sure is just a coincidence). And let's be real here, there's closed and "open" CPS institutions. And there's "juvie". All are prisons, it's really just the regimen that's different, and "open" should be understood to be something like minimum security prison)
Breaking and entering: same problem as with drugs. Being nearby, accidentally, will get you convicted.
Grand theft: being in a stolen car, knowingly ... or not, is grand theft.
And of course, there’s the fundamental criticism of the juvenile justice system and CPS: recidivism rates are higher for the system ... compared with just letting criminals go unpunished. It’s that bad. (Incidentally: the same is true for psychological problems: odds of improvement are better without treatment). Given the above “crimes” this makers more sense, I hope. “Criminal” (or “abused”) children often haven’t DONE anything they (or we) would consider a crime, then commit real crimes afterwards to take revenge against society for their treatment, because that treatment is so bad (violence, drugs, sex, forced and/or threatened is everywhere in CPS, schooling yourself is near impossible due to constant moving and instability). Understandable, to Some extent. Sadly both CPS and courts have financial incentives to get more children into the system, so this is getting worse.