Should children be held accountable criminally for their actions?

Magnetic Resonance Imaging shows pictures of the brain's pre-frontal cortex where reasoning and judgment occur. It is clearly seen that the brain of a 15 year old has a pre-frontal cortex that is not as developed as that of a 25 year old. The question being raised by attorneys representing teenagers in the criminal system is should this teenager who doesn't have the brain capacity to reason and show the judgment of an adult be tried as an adult? For those of you who have teenagers in the house as I do, I know you have asked yourself numerous times, "What was he/she thinking?????" We look at our teenagers as young adults but we must realize that their capacity to think and reason is not as developed as their outside bodies might fool us into thinking they are. Well, they look like an adult: therefore, they must be able to think and respond like an adult. But science and MRIs are showing something different. I am sure most of us can think back to an incident from our high school years or maybe more ( I won't tell if you don't tell :o) An easy example for me was an incident where my parents left four teenagers straight A responsible kids for a weekend. Well these responsible straight A students had a PARTY and our brains did not tell us that the neighbors would notice and tell our parents. I mean what were we thinking? Did we think the neighbors wouldn't notice? Did we think they wouldn't tell our parents? My adult fully-developed pre-frontal cortex says, "What were we thinking?" I am proof that the scientific findings and MRI pictures might be pointing us in the right direction but that brings us back to the original question....should we hold teenagers responsible for their actions as adults when the pre-frontal cortex says they aren't reasoning and exercising judgment as adults. Definitely food for thought. //