The three groups of scholars who present their findings in this issue of the Journal have undertaken an important and herculean task. For this undertaking, every student of crime must be deeply grateful. Prospective cohort studies are essential if we are to advance, in any fundamental way, our understanding of the causes of crime and provide important new leads for crime-prevention strategies. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) should be congratulated for having

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... d the foresight to finance research projects that, although important, will not bear fruit for many years. I earnestly hope that OJJDP will nourish to maturity the infant studies that it has conceived. As one who has long urged such an approach, I confess to my great sense of relief that somebody else is doing the actual work. These papers convey quite vividly the difficulty of gathering wave after wave of data, coding and tabulating it, and then making sense of it. Just keeping up with the flood of information while at the same time satisfying the reporting needs of the funding agency must be more than a full-time job, with precious little time left over for analysis and writing. Having said all that, let me focus on what remains to done-which is practically everything. These papers are reports of work in progress; understandably, their authors are in no position yet to provide clear answers to any important questions. But it is vital that all concerned keep their eyes firmly fixed on those questions and remember that, having spent the public's money, they owe something to that public-guidance on what to do about preventing or treating delinquency and the host of problem behaviors that covary with delinquency.