Contemporary movements in criminal justice, such as community-oriented policing and certain community corrections strategies, have been portrayed as new innovations that have little historical precedent. Although specific programs may be original, criminologists have advocated the importance of proactive and preventive programming for decades. Toward this end, the criminal justice system has been integrating its adversarial approach to the identification, apprehension, and correction of offenders with an increased service orientation by emphasizing community involvement. As such, criminal justice scholars and activists have encouraged officials to cultivate community partnerships to solicit citizen input. In reviewing the relevant literature, this chapter explores the view that the underlying objectives of the early American criminal justice system have remained largely unaltered. What had changed was public attitudes about crime, police organization, police and public perceptions of each other, and the complex relationship between politics and justice initiatives. In discussing community policing and restorative justice paradigms, the authors advised that the specifics of these approaches were less important than the guiding philosophy behind their increasing popularity. They conclude that contemporary proactive justice reflects the larger philosophical basis of the modern criminal justice system, and that what is old will become new again and again. 32 references