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I believe it is both development and social factors. Minors are more likely to be in a social group revolving around delinquency and crime, on account of not having a job that would take their time up (and be a better prospect for earning money). While they are usually fed and clothed, having a way to earn extra money gives them more freedom and status. Unfortunately, the state of the job market for young people looks like the opposite of freedom and status, even if manning the counter of McDonalds does pay a bit. Thus does drug dealing look more appealing.
I do not believe robbery is always an expression of antisociality. Robbery is very high status and a lauded activity when you do it to outsiders, as part of an army or a warband. Thus we must look at the teen's connection to the broader society. Is he a part of it, and yet robbing the same kind of people he socializes with? Or does he consider society overall a separate group from himself and his warband? The society that, in your own words, pre-imprisons him?
I find it ironic that not long ago you extolled the virtue of society supporting its youth, to the extent of darkly hinting at taking everything from the useless olds, and yet it's somehow bad when teens actually rob the useless olds.
The court system is in a bind. Imprisonment as it currently exists is barbaric and appears to do the opposite of rehabilitating first-timers. Thus the court is moved to be lenient to sympathetic criminals that appear to be fixable, because no other kind of punishment exists. I increasingly favor corporal punishment. Straightforwardly and immediately unpleasant, hardly more undignified than locking you up for years somewhere where you're almost certainly be beaten just as much or more (but extrajudicially and invisibly), you don't get to hang out for years with the cool tough criminal guys in case you considered that kind of a man cool, and you go back to fixing your life immediately.
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