34 freedoms of others and which takes into account the child's age and the desirability of promoting the child's reintegration and the child's assuming a constructive role in society. (…) 145. As for the guidelines and basic principles that must steer the exercise of criminal action in cases involving adolescents, the Inter-American Commission, following the standards established by the corpus juris and described earlier, has observed that there is a clear tendency in international human rights 120 law to afford greater protection to minors than to adults and to limit the role of jus puniendi. In general terms, international human rights law favors reserving those penalties that most severely restrict a minor's fundamental rights for only the severest of crimes. Hence, even in the case of criminalized offenses, laws protecting the child must advocate some form of punishment other than imprisonment or deprivation of 121 liberty. . 146. In those cases in which adolescents have been found criminally culpable for serious crimes that carry sentences of imprisonment, the State’s exercise of the jus puniendi must be informed by the principle of the best interests of the child. This is the sense of Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, cited in the previous section. A policy on crime that, in the case of juvenile offenders, is driven mainly by a retributive justice aimed at establishing culpability and that pays lip service to such basic considerations as prevention and cultivation of opportunity to prepare the youth offender to effectively rejoin society (restorative justice) would be incompatible with international standards on juvenile criminal justice. 147. Here the Inter-American Commission has written that particular obligations follow from Article 19 of the American Convention and Article VII of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties 122 of Man, which are to ensure the wellbeing of juvenile offenders and endeavor to rehabilitate them. Similarly, the Inter-American Court has held that when the State apparatus has to intervene in offenses committed by minors, it should make substantial efforts to guarantee their rehabilitation in order to allow 123 them to play a constructive and productive role in society. 148. As for the manner in which these penalties should be applied, the Beijing Rules provide that “Restrictions on the personal liberty of the juvenile shall be imposed only after careful consideration and shall be limited to the possible minimum” (Rule 17.1.b). Thus, even in the case of serious crimes that carry substantial penalties, the law must offer the judge the means to apply these penalties so that they are in the best interests of the child. In other words, “The reaction taken shall always be in proportion not only to the circumstances and the gravity of the offence but also to the circumstances and the needs of the juvenile as well as to the needs of the society” (Rule 17.1.a). 149. The premise of these standards is that in the case of children and adolescents, the State’s exercise of its punitive authority must be in strict accordance with its international obligations in the area of human rights and must have particular regard for the special condition of children and adolescents and their special needs of protection. This applies both to the determination of criminal culpability and the enforcement of the consequences that such culpability carries. 150. In previous cases, the Commission made reference to the fact that the State’s punitive response must be different when the crimes are committed by persons under the age of 18; precisely because of the particular situation of children and adolescents when they engage in such behaviors, the 120 IACHR, Report No. 41/99, Case 11.491, Merits, Minors in Detention (Honduras), March 10, 1999, para. 113. 121 IACHR, Report No. 41/99, Case 11.491, Merits, Minors in Detention (Honduras), March 10, 1999, para. 117. 122 IACHR, Report No. 62/02, Case 12.285, Merits, Michael Domingues (United States), October 22, 2002, para. 83. 123 Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Case of the “Street Children” (Villagrán Morales et al.), Judgment of November 19, 1999, para. 197.