The task of organizing a wide array of preventive interventions into a meaningful framework is complicated, since juvenile delinquency prevention involves an unorganized compilation of services. Social scientists have been unable to differentiate programs accurately or to compare and contrast existing strategies. Prior studies have seldom accounted for the complexity of services delivered or the nature of the youth population served. Four models are presented as credible approaches to differentiate delinquency preventive programs and practices: public health model, classification by intervention strategy and service delivery system, theory and crime correlates as a basis for conceptualization, and conceptualization by level of intervention. It is hoped that the approaches will also furnish criteria for constructing a useful classification of delinquency prevention programs. The author recognizes, however, that the approaches do not exhaust all possible program classification schemes. Other experts, for example, have noted additional relevant criteria: ecological dimensions, organizational structure, individual characteristics of program participants, behavioral settings, functional or reinforcement properties, and client perceptions of the psychosocial climate. 55 notes