This chapter will probe three aspects of prevention: 1. It will review tools and techniques for early identification of children and youth who may be exposed to or who are vulnerable to delinquency. 2. It will examine some systematic community efforts at prevention which have been subjected to appraisal. 3· It will explore some of the conditions for or prerequisites to prevention.

The superintendent of schools occupies the king-pin position in a school-community program for the prevention and control of juvenile delinquency. Via his teaching staff and the special school services, the administrator has close and continued contacts with every child and youth in the community for an extended period of time. The school receives the child early in life and aims to assist him directly in becoming a well-integrated and socially useful citizen. Because the schools have all the children, because they have trained personnel to deal with youth and youth problems, because their objectives call for developing socially acceptable and personally satisfying behavior, the superintendent finds himself at a tactical advantage, enjoyed by the head of no other agency concerned with the prevention and control of juvenile delinquency.