Nationwide data indicate that 20 percent of all arrests for serious crimes involve juveniles, and the public perception of the threat of juvenile crime is strong. Believing that the answer to the growth of serious juvenile crime is to treat serious juvenile offenders as adults charged with a felony, many States have enacted statutes that mandate the waiver of juveniles charged with serious crimes to adult courts. The presumption of such statutes is that adult courts will obtain a higher percentage of convictions and issue more severe sentences. Empirical evidence, however, does not indicate that waivers have such an effect. A comparative analysis of the dispositions of adult courts and juvenile courts with respect to the serious juvenile offender indicates that juvenile courts have a higher percentage of dispositions that involve incapacitative institutionalization. Further, the juvenile court system has a broader range of programs to modify the deviant behavior patterns of juveniles. There is growing evidence of effective programs for juveniles that both rehabilitate the offender and protect the public. The primary task of the juvenile justice system is to empirically evaluate existing programs to determine which are cost-effective and to expand the use of such programs.