Over the past several years, juvenile justice policy has shifted to a “get tough” regime that has only been strengthened by the incidents of well-publicized school violence. The authors administered questionnaires to 1,104 undergraduate students at 3 northeastern colleges during November 2000 to investigate their perceptions and attitudes toward juvenile justice policies in the United States. The findings reveal that students perceived the level of school violence to be rising and that zero tolerance policies were necessary. Females and non-criminal justice majors were more likely to perceive school violence as increasing. In fact, however, crime data indicates that school violence is declining. The authors discuss the implications of this study in terms of shaping teaching strategies to better educate students about critical issues within the criminal justice system. Not only should these academic programs teach critical thinking techniques, they should do more to engage students who report often being bored in class. Tables, references