Introduction
Governments of every country and the entire society have always been interested in decreasing the crime rate, as it affects the living standards of the population significantly. Consequently, these days, the problem of juvenile delinquency presents a pressing concern, and a wide range of studies are devoted to this topic. To address this issue, a great number of programs have been established. One of them is titled Scared Straight and aimed to cover teenage offenders and influence their mentality and opinion on crimes. This way, the purpose of this paper is to describe the aforementioned program and analyze its results and relevance in present-day developments.
Body
As was stated earlier, the Scared Straight program is intended to prevent its juvenile participants under 18 from continuing their illegal activity in the future. U. S. Department of Justice (2013) explains that it implies “organized visits to adult prison facilities for juvenile delinquents and youth-at-risk of becoming delinquent”. Therefore, the program includes two components, which are “tours of prison facilities and presentation by prison inmates” (U. S. Department of Justice, 2013). During such sessions, the participants are informed on the details of lifestyle in captivity, which are presented as horrors to scare the adolescents. They are convinced that their current actions will lead to imprisonment, and this result is worth avoiding.
Scared Straight became popular in 1979 when a documentary on its realization was published. It depicts the inmates, who are determined to terrify the young people and “scare them straight” (MixedMadness, 2013). The group of teenagers involved in the films is repeat offenders, and their crimes include gambling, racketeering, public intoxication, and others. It was reported that after the shooting, only one of the participants was repeatedly engaged in illegal activity (MixedMadness, 2013). Nowadays, Beyond Scared Straight appears to be the continuation of this film, which also demonstrates prevention actions in U. S. prisons (A&E, 2018). Therefore, this theory that a feat is highly likely to change the mentality of a person stays relevant.
Although Beyond Scared Straight is intended to be one of the follow-ups of the original version, there are some differences between them. The initial Scared Straight is presented as a documentary film revealing the lifestyle behind the bars, while Beyond Scared Straight is closer to a TV-show format with multiple episodes. The focus of the modern version is monitoring the results of the programs, so, unlike the original documentary, it contains the scenes of successes and failures of its participants. Beyond Scared Straight concentrates on transforming adolescents by giving them second chances.
The revelation of the prison lifestyle significantly contributes to crime rates decline, but the utter effectiveness of the Scared Straight program presents a matter of multiple discussions. The video showed that the majority of juvenile offenders were deterred from illegal actions in their future life, except for only one participant. The outcomes allow us to assume the effectiveness of such tours and prison presentations. However, U. S. Department of Justice (2013) stated that the outcomes of the program are not as beneficial as considered to be. U. S. Department of Justice (2013) highlights that “the evaluation found that participation in these types of programs increases the odds that youth will commit offenses in the future”. In addition, it was revealed that recidivism cases were more frequent as compared to a group of adolescents, who have completed regular case processing (U. S. Department of Justice, 2013). This way, the studies demonstrate that the program is not capable of supplying the utter result and reaching its aim.
Conclusion
In summary, it is also worth mentioning that the Scared Straight program cannot fulfill its objective, as its major instrument implies the horror of being imprisoned. It is not intended to address the issue comprehensively and does not cover probably the mentality problems of juvenile offenders. For this reason, it does not present a sufficient solution for crime deterrence among teenagers. Nevertheless, it may be a part of a comprehensive therapy and supply a considerable influence on adolescents in case applied with other programs.
References
A&E. 2018. Beyond Scared Straight: “Ice Mike” Returns (Season 3 Flashback) | A&E [YouTube video]. Web.
MixedMadness. 2013. Scared Straight 1978 [YouTube video]. Web.
U. S. Department of Justice. 2013. Practice Profile: Juvenile Awareness Programs (Scared Straight), NW, Washington, D. C. Web.