In recent years, the sustained criticism leveled at juvenile rehabilitation has raised the question of whether the public continues to endorse the correctional policy of saving youthful offenders. However, a 1998 statewide survey of Tennessee residents indicated that rehabilitation should be an integral goal of the juvenile correctional system. Survey respondents also endorsed a range of community-based treatment interventions and favored early intervention programs over imprisonment as a response to crime. Taken together, findings revealed that the public's belief in "child saving" remains firm and that citizens do not support an exclusively punitive response to juvenile offenders. Citizens supported a multimodal approach to intervention that included counseling, drug treatment, skill building, restoration of harm done to the community and some degree of monitoring. More than 9 in 10 preferred spending money for prevention-oriented programs over spending money to build prisons. Tables, notes, references