A youth with at least two adjudications for a violent crime should be considered chronically violent. The future of the juvenile justice system may rest on its ability to respond to serious and violent juvenile offenders through a blend of punishment and rehabilitation. Otherwise the legislatures will continue to turn to the adult system to handle the toughest cases. Given the need for strategic allocation of scarce resources, juvenile justice agencies need to fashion appropriate dispositional alternatives matched to youths whose risk to public safety requires the most intensive care and restrictive placements. This is the primary policy purpose in defining a special class of juvenile offenders. A case study of a major Federal initiative focusing on chronically violent delinquents is instructive. In 1981 the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention implemented Part I of the Violent Juvenile Offender Research and Development Program. The program demonstrated that a definition of violence or seriousness cannot by itself achieve the goals of any delinquency policy. The juvenile justice system must define legally and hold accountable those youths who meet the criteria through court action and appropriate treatment. Footnotes and 52 references are provided.