Imagine this. It’s 1979, and there’s a documentary on local broadcast television. It features juvenile delinquents who enter a New Jersey prison and spend the next three hours learning the stories and experiences of the inmates. All the details. All the grisly, gory, seedy, scary, frightening, terrifying details.
And we saw it all, unexpurgated and unvarnished.
This was the documentary Scared Straight!, where an inmate group known as “The Lifers” at Rahway State Prison in New Jersey participated in a program to help stop troubled kids from joining them in prison some day. The documentary was hosted by Peter Falk, and despite the show’s extremely coarse language and frank descriptions of prison life (trust me, this would have gotten a parental warning if it aired on HBO), the program became a wake-up call for both the concept of inmate custody and the paths people can go to either avoid jail – or become trapped in jail.
I’ve linked a 1978 16mm film print of the documentary here. And I can tell you, when I saw this video, it did put the fear of God in me. As I’m sure it did for many young viewers at the time.
And if you’re wondering whether the show worked out for all involved … there was a sequel, Scared Straight! 10 Years Later, that answered many of those questions. And I’ve linked it here as well.
Don’t let those smiling thumbnail faces fool you. Not under any circumstances. It’s shows like Scared Straight! that would eventually bring us the cinema verite shows like Cops and LockUp and Jail: Las Vegas. And all the content encompassed therein.
Chuck The Writer 
Nice post 🌅🌅
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These should be modernized and become required viewing in schools, starting in the fifth grade. Unfortunately, anyone who tried doing that today would probably be jailed, instead.
Maybe it’s just me, but more and more of the shackled smug thugs I see in courtrooms actually seem proud of what they’ve done – like they just successfully completed the latest step in an apprentice program.
And their facial expressions – almost to a person – void of any regret, seem to say: “What’s next? I’m ready, bring it!!”
As an aside, I’ve only had one up close and personal experience with a jail cell. That was for a tour of the old Albany PD Division 2 hoosegow; as part of my initial “training” when I was selected to be a 7th grade patrol boy. (That prestigious post has since become today’s taxpayer-funded crossing guard.)
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Even when I was a kid in the early 70s there were paid adult crossing guards.
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Well son of a gun. Sounds like my colleagues and I, deployed at Albany’s intersections in ’62, may have blazed a career path for the paid guards that followed.
Who knew?
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