There’s a popular television show distributed by the A&E network called Beyond Scared Straight. In it, teenagers spend a day in prison to see what everyday life is like for prisoners and to understand the many dangers, such as violence and sexual assault. The idea is that by seeing how terrible prison is, teens will be less likely to commit crimes or engage in risky behavior. The series is produced by a man named Arnold Shapiro, who created a documentary in 1978 called Scared Straight, which won an Oscar and an Emmy. In the documentary, a group of juvenile delinquents spends three hours at a state prison surrounded by “lifers” – inmates who are incarcerated for life. These inmates screamed at and generally attempted to terrify the teenagers in an attempt to scare them away from behavior that might land them in prison. The movie and television show were big successes, but evidence shows that the programs themselves are not.
The same year that the documentary aired, a professor at the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice conducted a controlled study of the Scared Straight program and found that the teens who had been at the prison were actually more likely to commit crimes than those in the control group. A 2002 analysis found similar results when studying Scared Straight and related programs – the teens who attended these programs were more likely to commit offenses in the future. No one has been able to determine a reason why this is the case.
There are also boot camps that attempt to terrify teens into being law-abiding. These usually involve grueling physical activity and harsh discipline and are intended to force participants to learn to follow rules and do away with non-conforming behavior. Like the Scared Straight programs, the number of repeat offenses is high.
There are a number of reasons why these programs aren’t successful. For one thing, much like we’ve learned from the failure of anti-drug campaigns like DARE, teenagers don’t react well to scare tactics. They tend to become defensive and dig their heels in. In the boot camps, teens are likely to become more violent after being exposed to all that aggression.
These programs also tend to lack proper mental health professionals. If a teen is using drugs because of a mental health problem or some other issue besides simply “needing discipline,” there’s no one equipped to deal with it. Unfortunately, some of the staff at the boot camps have physically or sexually abused the teens in their care, and some of the kids have even died while attending. One teenager in an Arizona boot camp died after being forced to eat mud and march in 100-degree heat. He was reportedly denied food and water. Sources also say that counselors would frequently kick the boys at the camp.
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