The Psychology of Adolescent Criminality. Episode 1. When A Teen Breaks The Law

Send us Fan MailThe worst part often isn’t the offense. It’s the moment the phone rings and a parent hears, “Your child has been involved in an incident,” and everything they thought they knew starts to slide. I’m Kim Lee, a child and adolescent psychotherapist, and I want to take adolescent criminality out of the headline frame and put it back where it belongs: inside real families, real feelings, and real developmental pressures.We start in the consulting room with a teen caught shoplifting repeatedly. The point isn’t the stolen object. It’s the surge that arrives just before taking it the build-up of tension, the brief hit of aliveness, and what that can reveal about emotional flatness, inner conflict, or the drive to self-medicate through risk, drugs, or alcohol. From there we widen the lens to the developing brain: impulse control and the ability to pause and reflect are still under construction, and peer influence can normalize behavior that a young person would question if they were alone.I also push back on the reflex to punish first and understand later. If we treat youth offending as isolated behavior, we miss context, lose meaning, and risk losing the child. Criminal behavior rarely appears out of the blue; there are often clues and a longer trajectory, and ignoring them can lead to painful outcomes. I close with a simple line I hold tightly: understanding is not excusing, it’s explaining.If this series is useful, subscribe, share it with someone who works with teens, and leave a review. What do you think adults most often misunderstand about teen crime and prevention?