Studies show that the majority of juveniles now detained are charged with property offenses, and they do not constitute a serious threat to the community. Experience and research document the negative psychosocial impact on juveniles of harshly restrictive institutional care. In facilities where security is primarily a function of staffing and restrictive construction and programming have given way to behavioral control through staff-resident interactions, a noncoercive and potentially therapeutic environment has been implemented. Minimum security facilities not only promise a more humane and rehabilitative enivironment for juvenile detainees, but they are also considerably less expensive to construct than maximum security facilities. Although the community must be adequately protected from violent juvenile offenders, the majority of juvenile offenders can be housed in minimum security facilities at a significantly lower cost and in an environment more conducive to the fostering of normative behaviors.