Beyond Scared Straight

A&E known for its famous mystery and murder shows has come out with a new series based around troubles teenagers whose parents hope to intervene and change their children’s behavior before they end up in jail, in the streets, or dead later on in life. From episode to episode the camera crew will follow a jail’s scared straight or straighten up program they run for young troubled kids in the hopes to straighten up their behavior before they are old enough to do real harm to themselves, other people, or more importantly their lives. Often times they will first go through the booking process that normal criminal would go through such as finger prints, an initial pat down, and then even switching into normal prisoner garb. The kids will then usually get a tour of the jail, and I mean the entire jail visiting some of the worst prisoners including killers, rapists, and big drug dealers many of which are in jail for the rest of their lives. In my opinion this is the portion of the show that really gets to and scares the kids the most, as they see all of these cold hearted criminals in jail who really will show no mercy to anyone if they actually ended up inside of that jail. In some cases the police officers really will get in the children’s face, scream at them, and even make them cry, anything to get through to these adolescents that this really is not the type of life they want to pursue and go through. Some of these people have been in and out of jail since they were just as young as the kids there to visit them. Physical discipline, running and endurance are often forced upon the teens by the officers to try and break them down before they build them back up. Usually towards the end of the tour the officers will bring in some of the prisoners who have been terrorizing the kids the entire time to talk one on one with the kids and show them some of their own experiences from within jail and showing these kids this is really not a place they want to go. After the tours and usually about a month after the visits the camera crews will follow up with the teens and see how they have changed or sometimes not changed from their criminal ways. Most times though the kids have tried to straighten up, stop doing drugs, and respect their parents to pursue a better life. (424)