Policymakers in the 19th century expressed interest in juvenile justice issues, but left public efforts to local and State organizations. The Federal Government moved into this area in 1908 and from that period through 1960 sponsored conferences and research, collected data, and enacted short-term emergency and youths serving legislation. The Government made a minor commitment to new delinquency causal and treatment theories from 1961 to 1974, but assumed a large-scale obligation to delinquency prevention programs from 1974 to the early 1980's. Most programs developed in response to two theories: that an individual's problems caused delinquency or that larger societal problems precipitated delinquency. Examples of the first approach included the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Project and New Jersey's Scared Straight program. Many projects based on this theory were unsuccessful, and a 1981 Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention report suggested that delinquency causations were more related to environmental setting than individual deviance. Initial prevention programs based on social structure theories demonstrated inconclusive results, but a growing body of research is substantiating the unsucessful nature of individual treatment as well as the potential for programs that change educational practices which reinforce delinquency tendencies, remove societal hurdles which discourage equal educational and career opportunities, and reform organizational policies producing negative labels that result in midconduct. The paper includes 101 references.