Beyond Scared Straight-Preventing today's youth from becoming tomorrow's convict
By MrsBone344
@MrsBone344 (48)
United States
December 8, 2011 2:06pm CST
Beyond Scared Straight Season 3 airs tonight Dec. 8th at 10/9c. Check your local listings for encore presentation. For those of you who are not familiar with the show, let me explain what the show is about. The goal is pretty much what I've stated in the topic above. It is a documentary film by Arnold Shapiro who also started the original series "Scared Straight" in the 1970s.
It profiles the jail and prison deterrent programs aimed for at-risk youth from becoming future inmates. Each one-hour episode focus on a different existing jail/prison programs in the U.S. and follows four to five at-risk teens before the program and then a follow up or an after care at the conclusion of the program. Teens get to experience first hand of the harsh realities of life behind bars ususally by going through a booking process, visiting the cells, wearing prison outfits, interact with inmates, and sometimes witnessing cell extractions.
This season, viewers will see things like never before in this series, teens are kept in cells overnight in a unique overnight program; a teen gets thrown out for being defiant, combative behavior; inmates are tasered and extracted from cells and more.
1 person likes this
3 responses
@Fortunata (1135)
• United States
9 Dec 11
I wonder how effective this program is? I've never seen it before. Do they follow these teens later, and follow up to see if they indeed are on the straight and narrow? I'm curious about that. Otherwise it just seems to be a waste of time, other than just shock value for viewers. Does it seem to have any lasting effect on troubled teens, and deter them from a life of crime?
@MrsBone344 (48)
• United States
13 Dec 11
Thank you for commenting. Like I described before, they do follow the teens later and some of them do after care. I suggest that you see all seasons first then make conclusions. According to some teens, it does have a lasting effect on them because they have seen first hand what life is like behind bars on their path to destruction.
@mamacara1 (2)
•
9 Dec 11
I think this is an excellent program. It helps not only the kids, but their parents and families, and the communities they are coming from and at risk to harm or put at risk. Kids that are as bad as we see on these shows and even in our own societies should be placed in programs like these to try to show them exactly what they are facing if they continue down the path they are going! This is what they need, to show them that they are not as invincible as they seem to believe. To see a grown man broken down by a guard or other inmates is what they need to understand is the reality of the jail systems. I hope that more parents and families will put their troubled youths through this program and others like it. Hopefully my children will grow up in a world with a little less crime!
@MrsBone344 (48)
• United States
9 Dec 11
Well said. I don't know if we have those types of program in Georgia but we need it. It needs to be a supplemental program for every school system and prisons need to implement this as well. Alot of fools down here think that just because they are sagging there pants and smoke makes them tough. They need to see what a real ganster is about.
@Hatley (163776)
• Garden Grove, California
8 Dec 11
hi Mrsb one I have seen it before and its a good program I
think. It was very interesting and I hoped it would go on for a few years.there are a lot of kids who need this tough love and its
up to parents to place them there.If they can scare straight even
a handful think how this will help so many families with kids who break every rule and every law and think its funny to break the laws and rules like that. they are the ones who will not obey or even listen to their parents.
