Delinquents in the treatment group were those at highest risk, whose parents were most likely to ask for out-of-home placement. The functional family therapy program followed here emphasized behavioral and social learning theory and techniques; the intervention was divided into assessment, therapy, and education phases. Therapists worked to help family members understand their underlying motives, to remediate poor parenting skills and family living skills, and to increase the frequency of contact between the child and the father, who was often not living with the family. Data on 23 delinquents in the experimental group and 22 in the control group showed that, when felony and misdemeanor charges were combined, the recidivism rates for the treatment and control groups were 8.7 percent and 40.9 percent, respectively. The main difference lay in the number of misdemeanors committed. The study's high-risk treatment population and long follow-up period highlight the strong treatment effects obtained. 1 table, 2 notes, and 28 references