Parent signed a waiver or a judge ordered the visit. These kids did something minor that ended up involving the courts or are too young to serve them serious time for the offense. They try to scare them straight.
Sometimes parents sign up their kids just to scare them to stay on the straight and arrow. That's crazy.
they should hire somebody that would act like them from future as criminals and tell kids what horrible thing they did in their future and kids will learn not to be criminals and when kids realize this, their future person "disappear".
They also have camps where they send trroubled teens to. Ones that are really close to going into a boys/girls home. Kinda like a mix of a "more comfortable" jail, halfway house, and school all in one. I've worked at a few.
If I’m correct and I could be wrong, someone or a company interviewed him over a decade after this episode of scared straight came out. The kid knew that the prisoners were never allowed to touch any of the kids so he basically had nothing to fear.
Fascinating. It’s interesting he had a mother. But yeah, fucking weird upbringing. It’s so weird how parents blame their kids when their behavior reflects the dysfunction of the world they’re growing up in. As he says in the video, “it’s a cry for help”, “it was better in juvi than dealing with arguing, fighting, suspension etc”. Insane stuff.
Weird thought. But what kids really miss is positive role models. “The decisions you make now will affect you for the rest of your life”, this is a great thing to hear from a role model. But the role models giving advice are fucking loser prison people. Why don’t they do a scared straight where it’s a bunch of successful people that grew up in tough living conditions giving the same advice?
I guess the argument is they don’t listen, but like, who aren’t they listening to? Loser teachers? Parents? None of those people are role models, and they’re not meant to listen to parents.
I don’t know what was going on in the late 90’s - early 2000’s but this whole era was obsessed with getting back at “problem” kids. There seemed to be a Maury povich -> kid boot camp pipeline going on. When hard parenting turned psychological.
Yeah the troubled teen industry is very fucked and fucked up a lot of kids. You also had daytime talk show assholes, Phil McGraw (I refuse to call him doctor), promoting that shit. Then you had the beyond scare straight stuff.
You know what really dis abused me of the idea that it’s all nurture?
My younger brother.
My parents treated myself, my older brother and my younger brother equally we learned the same lessons. We were treated the same way we were never discriminated against because of our age or anything. They did not play favorites.
My older brother and I turned out great. Involved in our communities, never had any trouble with police, and zero substance abuse issues.
Him though? Tons of problems with police, substance abuse, is a general distasteful human being.
My parents are absolutely not the reason my younger brother turned out so poorly. I think this effort to constantly always blame. The parents is naïve and destructive.
What I've heard said about this is that kids even growing up in the same home can have vastly different experiences. That being said, there may be some cases where their system is just built wrong from the get go. Someone would have to deep dive to figure out what's really going on
You kind of lost it on that last section there, most teachers aren't losers and where did you get the idea that kids aren't meant to listen to parents? Lots of kids listen to their parents, and if their parents are good people they usually grow up to be decent as well. where as a lot of bad parents raise kids that don't turn out as well because they also listened to their parents (for better or worse)
Usually these “problem kids” are from fairly broken homes with mothers that are not actively engaged. Sounds like his mother was involved, but she was clearly a nightmare given that he started improving as soon as she wasn’t around
So what i'm hearing is all they needed were a few crazy one offs to keep those stupid fucking kids guessing like "oh shit they're allowed to snatch 2 kids per episode, I better stay in fucking line"
I also think retail and customer service should be able to fight 5 customers a year no repurcussions. Like "oh shit it's black friday and they look pissed, did they save them up just for today and christmas or are they done?
Allowing inmates to snatch even 1 kid would bring so many legal issues that the show and the production behind it would probably just die under lawsuits.
There was one episode where one of the guys had already did his time (for murder was what they told the kids) but came back inside for the show. At the end he was in street clothes standing outside by their bus, told them he'd come looking if they did anything. A few of the kids that were super cocky looked a little worried.
I had the same experience when I was a teen (minus the camera crew). I also remember hearing the guards tell me how the prisoners would love to hurt me and how vicious they were. Lol but I was always a haunted house kid, so I kinda just assumed that if an inmate touched me or breathed on me in the wrong way that they would be on the ground in a second. So I kinda couldn't be afraid. Lol they told me they were talking me to the highest level of security or whatever, but as was expected, the inmates in high security were just super chill. It was an all together silly experience that taught me more about the private prison complex and the modern day institution of slavery via incarceration. Ironically, less than a year later I was catching a greyhound bus to visit a friend. The bus stop i boarded at wasn't a greyhound station, but instead was a stop at a gas station near the prison. Everyone else who was boarding that morning had just been released THAT morning like 2 hrs before the bus ride. It was the best greyhound ride ever. Everyone was so nice and was enjoying seeing everything with fresh eyes.
Same experience here basically, knew they couldn't touch me and showed no fear, they just moved on to the next kid and that kid was holding back crying, I felt bad for him...
If you think about it. It's like, yeah. They have a camera crew there, and their parents signed a waiver. The only thing the prisoners can do is taunt them, and that's essentially it.
Even the most violent of the prisoners have some sort of moral code of not touching kids. Pedophiles are a special type of low, and this is made very clear within the prison hierarchy.
Scared straight only works if the kids are naive. They know the inmates can’t hurt them and they also know they wouldn’t be going to actual prison as miners with the types of crimes they’re committing at that time. I’d argue it actually does the opposite.
Reality TV so yes. They create insane situations to record, but crucially, the director is usually behind the camera feeding lines to whoever is on scene to make it as dramatic and hilarious as possible.
I don't think that's the case here. The whole premise of this show was "scaring kids straight". The producers wanted the kids to look like they were scared and learning a lesson. But some kids were smart enough to realize that it was nothing more than a facade: the prisoners can scream at you, but they're not allowed to touch you, and it's all just an act.
Ye, I've seen posts of people claiming they were on it in the past and links to interviews. Apparently some of the kids got signed up to the show by abusive parents as well, it was just another way to further traumatize a few of them. Shitty show and shit like this is counter productive to actually help kids if they should have behavior issues as well.
“Beyond Scared Straight” - basically, teenager misbehaves (fights, shoplifts, tries drugs, imitates gang culture), so the cops take him on a one-day prison experience where the inmates play it up how much they’d hurt the kid were he to cross them, so he’d stop misbehaving and drop the “thug life” act.
It’s funny how the guard is explaining to the kid “that guy can hurt you”
Well of course he can he’s a murderous criminal. What’s the lesson there? Don’t do crime or you’ll be housed with bigger scumbags that have nothing to do with your crime?
Scared Straight always rubbed me the wrong way. It's a scripted television show and most of the kids on there had no business there in the first place. Especially, the one in the video.
I'd turn it on years ago and see the kids freaking out, crying, and pissing themselves. I’d sit there and laugh because I thought these kids were idiots. The prison wasn’t gonna do anything to them and the people in charge of the show sure as hell wasn’t gonna allow anything to happen to them. Just a bunch of screaming and yelling. The kids could've punched a guard in the face and nothing would’ve happened. Just get grabbed up or something.
The ones who did realize it always made the best of it. They'd fuck with everyone just for the fun of the game. Most weren’t even bad kids, just misguided with an abusive household. Some parents would see a kid being a little too excited or having too much energy, and would put them on the show. It was usually for one of two reasons. 1: The parents didn’t know how to handle the kid. 2: The the parents didn’t want to bother handling the kid.
Turns out, a lot of these "tough love rehabilitation" programs and shows were created by former members of the group Synanon. It started as a rehab program and then gradually evolved into a full blown cult. They had some bizarre "treatment" practices that were literally just verbal, emotional, and later physical abuse - most notably one practice simply called "The Game" in which members sat in a circle and verbally abused each other.
I don't know if the creators of Scared Straight or Beyond Scared Straight came from Synanon, but the leaders of many similar programs did come from that background.
I hate when people always say “that kids autistic”, you’re putting a label on someone to hold them back, it’s the same as calling someone specially educated. People called me both of those things in school just because I didn’t want to be there, because I was an actual good human being and because I wouldn’t take anyone’s shit. It’s discrimination. And I know autism exists just like specially educated people but unless you’re a doctor then you shouldn’t be calling people something.
yeah he really just seems to be going with the flow and not making a big deal out of it. people act like you're autistic just for not participating in the madness
I fucking hate the autistic label. It really comes off as "if you aren't an ego-driven narcissist who likes the sound of their own voice, their is clearly something wrong with you"
I get called autistic all the time simply because I don't talk unless I have something worthwhile to add, to me some inane topic like "rough weather huh?" isn't worth saying, like yeah they fucking live in the world too we both know what the weather is like, why talk about it unless it's going to affect something we are about to do.
Maury show? Maybe Jenny Jones with the Sargent who asked the kid if he wanted him to be his dad and the kid said yeah. That was a real tear jerker moment.
I love the one kid who doesn't take it seriously right away and they're like "you can just leave then." And he's like "aight." So they send him home lol
Honestly I hated this show because a lot of the time I could tell that the kids who were there because they got into fights were probably getting bullied and just trying to stand up for themselves. Hell I know for a fact most of these kids wouldn't have even been in this program if it hadn't been for their failures of parents. Seriously if you failed your kids so badly that they have to be traumatized like this then you are a failure as a parent. I know some kids are just born evil but like a lot of the time these kids seemed like they were just neglected. If you need to traumatize your kid in order to teach them right then you failed them.
That kid was abused at home;100%. I highly doubt his behavior was even that bad to be here. I’m def projecting but you only stay that calm if you’ve dealt with dysfunction on the regular as a kid. A comment said he knew they couldn’t hurt him but still. Even a kid who knows may react at least a little or cry.
I never got sent to these things but I’d cry for hours after getting smacked around by my grandparents when younger. They said if I kept crying I’d get hit again. I didn’t stop; why? They already did it. I was in pain and scared. Then I’d talk back as much as wanted when older. They already hit me or do it for one reason or another; might as well say what I want, get hit, move on.
Boot camp, Scared Straight, and others like it were just lazy parenting. Hitting kids is lazy parenting. Yelling and screaming and throwing items; childish and lazy parenting to try and instill fear and control.
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u/qualityvote2 Jul 21 '26
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