Restorative justice has emerged in recent years as a promising approach to juvenile delinquency focused on repairing harm and rebuilding relationships. The practice of restorative justice has already demonstrated significant effects on individual crime victims and offenders in a number of jurisdictions around the world. However, a greater community-building potential has yet to occur due to the failure to understand and apply restorative principles in diverse contexts. The three competing policy models of recent years have been the interventionist, libertarian, and crime control models. The restorative vision shares some of the concerns of each perspective. However, this vision appears either to challenge, rise above, or sidestep longstanding strands of debate in criminal and juvenile justice informed by the three dominant policy perspectives. The three core principles that form the basis for a normative theory of restorative justice include repair, stakeholder involvement, and the transformation of community and government roles in the response to come. Restorative theories of intervention have a connection with informal social control and social support mechanisms. Applying restorative justice practices offers a means of strengthening social control and social support mechanisms as core components of social capital in the response to youth crime and troublesome behavior. Table, figure, and 87 references (Author abstract modified)