Documentary Movie Reviews

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Scared Straight! (1978)

Rate: 9
Viewed: 11/23

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11/23: Scared Straight! is a famous Oscar-winning documentary that presents an aggressive in-your-face intervention to wake up juvenile delinquents through real prisoners' harsh talks before they're sent to the big house for future crimes.

I'll say, for that time, this form of deterrence seems effective, but today, I know it won't work because there's no physical confrontation involved. Moreover, you have all the parents, relatives, teachers, police officers, judges, probation officers, and counselors telling juvenile delinquents the same thing over and over, but nothing ever gets through their heads. So, they end up in prison, regardless. It's been a million of chances along the way to turn things around.

The aftermath as shown is manipulative because, in reality, the program doesn't work, producing more harm than not, although the theory sounds great which can be successful only for the right kids with certain impressionable characteristics. Hence, the top question to ask is: what are they?

One research paper came to this conclusion: "A nonsignificant overall effect was found (d = 0.10), indicating that juvenile awareness programs have no effect on offending behavior and other outcomes that are related to delinquency." And also, "the results showed that programs such as Scared Straight generally increase offending levels with a rate of 1% to 28% in the experimental group relative to a no-treatment control group."

Why is that? Derek Gilna of Prison Legal News surmised it "may be because poor decision-making, a lack of impulse control due to immaturity, anger problems and substance abuse issues cannot be addressed by having adult prisoners scream threats at youths in an attempt to frighten them." Compounding the aforementioned problems are mental issues and low IQ. By the way, Angelo Speziale, the weird-looking white Italian kid, was eventually caught decades later for a 1982 cold rape/murder case and is currently serving life (or is he now paroled?) in the exact same prison where Scared Straight! was filmed at.

Toward the end of the documentary, I realized something more than ever why they committed crimes which struck me as a prevailing theme: too much alcohol and/or drug abuse. Although everybody said the guy with one eye was the scariest and did the most to set them straight, I'll have to go with the white dude in brown hat and yellow lined shirt for making the most sense, especially when he presented five options in terms of what to do in prison. At any rate, every inmate spoke well.

All in all, Scared Straight! is a good try, and I've enjoyed it, but sadly, the program isn't an effective crime prevention strategy.