Strike one, prevention, entailed the formation of a team to improve child support collections and to create an organization that would run like an enterprise and not like a social service agency. Strike two, intervention, focused on truancy because truancy petitions filed by the county attorney's office had almost doubled from 300 in 1993 to nearly 600 in 1994. Truancy was also chosen as an intervention project because the author had seen the start of a truancy program in Los Angeles, Abolish Chronic Truancy (ACT), and she modeled her Truancy Intervention Project (TIP) after ACT and tailored it to her jurisdiction. In addition to marked improvement in school attendance, TIP was cited by the St. Paul Police Department for contributing to a decline in crime rates for purse snatching, auto theft, burglary, and vandalism during the peak crime hours of 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Strike three, detention, was reserved for violent juvenile offenders, and a Gangs and Guns Law Enforcement Unit was established in the Ramsey County Attorney's office.