It started when an apple was tossed and ended with 25 students, ages 11 to 15, in jail. Now parents are questioning how an age-old adolescent prank became criminalized, and how these kids will be scarred for life by their arrests.

The food fight happened last Thursday in a Chicago school lunchroom. Within minutes, dozens of middle-school students joined in the ruckus. The 25 who were arrested were charged with reckless conduct, a misdemeanor, and were released to their parents, some after hours of being in a jail cell.

“My children have to appear in court,” Erica Russell, the mother of two eighth-grade girls who spent eight hours in jail, told reporters. “They were handcuffed, slammed in a wagon, had their mug shots taken and treated like real criminals.”

“They’re all scared,” Ms. Russell said of the two dozen arrested students. “You never know how children will be impacted by that. I was all for some other kind of punishment, but not jail. Who hasn’t had a food fight?”

Criminal justice experts say the accused will most likely be sentenced to community service or probation. Since they are juveniles, their records would remain confidential until adulthood — 17 under Illinois law — at which point the arrests would be expunged.

Did the authorities overreact or are the charges warranted? You tell us.