Results are presented from research on alternative programs for serious juvenile offenders. Each program is profiled according to 14 characteristics: residential/ nonresidential, area served, auspice, date of program origination, intake criteria and reasons for referral of current clients, current clients' demographic information, average length of stay, source of referral, definition of 'serious,' program goals and what the program is an alternative to, services provided and intervention strategy, method of treatment and clinical techniques emphasized. kind of followup and aftercare provided, and staff composition. The client linkage perspective is analyzed from the point of view of the young people in the programs, and efforts made by program staff to promote and facilitate contact between clients and their own social networks and critical community subsystems are discussed. The study findings suggest that community-based intervention strategies can assume many forms, operate in a variety of ways, and be located in different kinds of settings. The key to analyzing how community-based a program is as well as its community-based nature and purpose is to consider how much and what kind of emphasis a program's intervention strategy and model of operation place on various social networks and community subsystems. Twenty-seven tables and approximately 50 references are included. Appendixes contain questionnaires administered to program directors and juvenile participants.