Scared Straight! (1978) on Netflix
NR197852mCrimeDocumentary
Teenage repeat offenders agree to a three-hour prison session instead of jail time. At Rahway State Prison, inmates serving life sentences confront them about what prison life is really like.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.6/10901 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
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Plot summary
A group of juvenile delinquents, 15 to 19 years old, are repeat offenders whose offenses include petty theft, drug addiction, public intoxication, gambling, counterfeiting, and racketeering. Most of them come from Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York, and they agree to join an experiment instead of serving jail time or doing probation and public service. The participants range from teenagers in poor inner-city neighborhoods to teenagers in the affluent suburbs of New York City. At Rahway State Prison, inmates serving life terms, most of them convicted of murder, armed robbery, or both, shout at and frighten the youths. Over a three-hour session, these inmates describe prison conditions in an effort to steer the teenagers away from criminal life.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Scared Straight! (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When Scared Straight! aired uncensored on television in the late 1970s, it was the first time the words "fuck" and "shit" were broadcast on many networks.
- A 2004 Washington State study on the real-world Scared Straight programs the film popularized found that every dollar spent on them produced $203.51 in additional costs.
- In 2011, the advocacy group Campaign for Youth Justice petitioned A&E to cancel the spin-off series Beyond Scared Straight, arguing it spread "a noxious program" and might violate federal juvenile-justice standards.
- The documentary's impact led many U.S. states to launch their own "scared straight" programs modeled on the Rahway experiment shown in the film.
- Criminologist James Finckenauer ran the first controlled study of the Scared Straight program in 1978, and found that teenagers who went through the Rahway session were actually more likely to reoffend than those who did not.
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