A review of the growing number of interventions by a variety of agencies to deal with truancy reveals a movement away from formal processing in the juvenile court toward administrative hearings conducted by nonlegal professionals and informal discretionary action by school officials. When the juvenile court has become involved in truancy cases, it has become increasingly popular to adjourn cases under a warning from the court that if the juvenile does not begin attending school, then after a period of time, the court will reconvene to issue a formal order. A characteristic of all these interventions is the absence of due process procedures applied to juveniles and families alleged to have violated the truancy law. Reasons for the movement away from the formal legal processing of truancy cases are viewed as based in a general crisis in the normalization of youth centered in the educational system. The percentage of unemployed youth vulnerable to criminogenic influences has significantly increased in recent years, the truancy has been targeted as a major reason for this. This has influenced the range of interventions to deal with it, and in the process, the mandates of legal processing have lessened in importance. Seventy-seven references are provided.