The move toward performance-based standards is based on total quality management, a concept that has revolutionized business and some government agencies. Performance-based standards would give correctional personnel a barometer to use in gauging whether they are achieving the desired outcomes. Performance-based standards use empirical measures of outcomes to determine the effectiveness of correctional practices. This article discusses how some of the new developments in business, government, and corrections can be used to change the view of how standards for juvenile corrections might be developed in accordance with the performance-based paradigm. After defining total quality management as a comprehensive, client-focused strategy to improve the output of an organization, the authors discuss the restructuring of correctional agencies to incorporate total quality management. Other topics considered are conditions of confinement and performance-based standards, environmental quantification, models for measuring the conditions of confinement, and surveys of juvenile institutions that obtain data on environmental quality. 2 tables and 25 references