Round 1: Scared Straight

Program description. “In the 1970s, inmates serving life sentences at a New Jersey (USA) prison began a program to ‘scare’ or deter at-risk or delinquent children from a future life of crime. The program, known as ‘Scared Straight’, featured as its main component an aggressive presentation by inmates to juveniles visiting the prison facility. The presentation depicted life in adult prisons, and often included exaggerated stories of rape and murder… The program received considerable and favorable media attention and was soon replicated in over 30 jurisdictions nationwide… Although the harsh and sometimes vulgar presentation in the earlier New Jersey version is the most famous, inmate presentations are now sometimes designed to be more educational than confrontational but with a similar crime prevention goal. Some of these programs featured interactive discussions between the inmates and juveniles, also referred to as ‘rap sessions.’”

Do you think that Scared Straight had a good effect (i.e., decreased the rate of juvenile crime), bad effect (i.e., increased the rate of juvenile crime), or had no effect?