Under new federal legislation, the development of comprehen sive criminal justice plans will be a prerequisite for receipt of federal matching grants to strengthen state and local crime- control capabilities. This will be a difficult task in a national structure administered by a variety of disciplines, by numerous and often overlapping political jurisdictions, and with distinct subsystems for processing juvenile and adult offenders. The current status of criminal justice planning offers some guides, promising new instrumentalities, and the experience of federally financed planning in other fields to assist in the effort. However, few models of comprehensive criminal justice planning are available. A concerted program of technical assistance through training workshops, planning materials, and clearing-house and consultation services will be needed if the nation is to meet this challenge successfully. Finally, although the exact requirements of criminal justice planning will be determined by the final anticrime enactment, some basic requisites are likely to appear under any legislative formula. These include ( 1) a view of planning as a continuing process, (2) a bias toward the detail necessary to translate general improvement standards into solu tions workable for a given jurisdiction, (3) serious attention to all facets of criminal administration and a strong burden of justification for ignoring any, (4) a recognition in federal planning standards of the time needed to evolve and refine quality plans, (5) the establishment of planning machinery which involves all necessary competencies and is representative of all criminal justice interests, (6) well-designed and orderly programing for the planning mission, both in relation to long- term plans and annual action programs, and (7) the incorpora tion of explicit, quantified program goals and evaluative mechanisms capable of measuring their achievement.