Talk:Scared Straight!

Recidivism rates
The statement of 'The recidivism rate of the original two casts was less than 10%.' needs citation, Considering evidence to the contrary later in the article. Otherwise it should be left out.

98.210.88.228 (talk) 00:28, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Original research
130.156.29.112 keeps trying to insert the following text:


 * Of course, it must be remembered that the program was the brainchild of a film maker, not a psychiatrist specializing in the rehabilitation of felons; therefore, the focus was on whatever theatrical value could be obtained by filming a group of hulking inmates scaring relatively young teenagers.

Phrases like "it must be remembered" are frequently a warning sign of original research. I do not think this paragraph is any exception. For all we know, Arnold Shapiro got the idea for Scared Straight! when a psychiatrist specializing in the rehabilitation of felons said to him "You know, if some of the young people who are in small-time trouble now could see just how brutal life in prison really is, it might scare them straight." Am I saying such a thing happened? No, but that's just the point: We do not have any reliable sources telling us whose "brainchild" the program was. We do not have any reliable sources telling us whether Shapiro consulted with professionals of the kind 130.156.29.112 tries to assert had no input into the production. We do not have any reliable sources telling us that Shapiro's "focus" was theatrical value and no other kind. In short, we have no reliable sources supporting 130.156.29.112's version of events, and we can hardly tell readers that they "must" remember what 130.156.29.112 is only guessing to be the case. -- 209.6.177.176 (talk) 05:14, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


 * 130.156.31.148/130.156.31.112/130.156.31.182, you keep accusing others of bad faith but the fact is that they have given reasons why the passage should not be there; you by contrast have ignored the talk page completely. -- 209.6.177.176 (talk) 00:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Anon (same one?) seems to continue to insist on placing the offending phrase, or some version thereof, in the article. Still no justification provided for it.  Some justification is needed, given that it is totally unsourced and blatantly violates WP:EDITORIAL.  If you have some source which verifies that the program was conducted without input from anyone with expertise in rehabilitation, and verifies what Shapiro said he was going for with regard to theatrical value vs. a genuine belief that the tactic might actually work, then just cite that source.  If you don't have any such source, then that's just your interpretation and opinion and, even though I find your opinion plausible, it still doesn't belong here.  Mwelch (talk) 03:24, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Angelo Speziale?
Is this the same Angelo Speziale that appeared in the film? If so, it would probably be worth mentioning. 4.242.138.246 (talk) 19:19, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Kids Of North Jersey
I was reading up on this and I was wondering if there's anyone who can help me. I was in a Scared Straight program in New Jersey that was named Kids Of North Jersey where there was emotional, physical and mental abuse. I was in there for 4 yrs and I also have a website that is souly dedicated to the New Jersey Branch. Is there anyway where we can do a Wiki page on this specific program? I have loads of people whom I spent time with in there that may be willing to put in some actual events and information about it.

For further info, please visit both of these sites:

http://www.kidsofbergencounty.com/

and a YT video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyK3XlsWIEQ

Here's a video on the "Over The G.W." movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLy7z-2tbAA —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.100.22.81 (talk) 03:16, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Melinda?
Who the hell is this Melinda, and Easy E? WTF

Who wrote this crap? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.180.46.70 (talk) 21:44, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Everyone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.21.133.207 (talk) 14:48, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Further information needed for balance
While the citations are worthy, the article gives the impression that the "Scared Straight" programs are labeled a failure due to one member of the program later being convicted. Further failures would be better noted, as the current article mentions the initial program having a singular failure, no further aftermath of the others in the program and other states emulation of the program may have been different, yielding different results. A suggestion would be for one well acquainted with the meta-analysis to provide the statistics and further background in the various programs enacted by the states.Wzrd1 (talk) 16:30, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Who is Qaadir?
Following on from 'who is Melinda' above, the article says None of the "graduates" of the original documentary have since been convicted of a felony except for Angelo Speziale, who in 2010 was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for the rape and murder of his neighbor in 1982 (after the film was made).[2] Qaadir was the only one to become a professional criminal and spend his entire adult life in prison.

There's no other mention of a "Qaadir" in the article. Incidentally, if he has really "spent his entire adult life in prison", it seems unlikely that he hasn't been convincted of a felony. HenryFlower 10:26, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Confused focus
The article seems to be talking about three separate things at once. 1. The original documentary. 2. The follow up specials aired decades later. 3. The scared straight programs that were inspired by these shows. If Wikipedia had been around in the 90's it's likely the revival series would have their own wikipedia pages. The opening of the article and the infobox imply it's just about the documentary but then the article covers all of them. That format implies it should be a generatl article and the documentary should be covered in the history section. Harizotoh9 (talk) 00:58, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Beyond Scared Straight
Is it possible for an article for Beyond Scared Straight series be created? Cwater1 (talk) 00:42, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Overall increases in offending, does not dis-prove impact on more-serious crime types.
One thing i'm consistently-reading in every summary and reviewing-introduction paragraph in pages and sections describing the analysis of the effectiveness of the program/s, is a without-differentiation, IN-discrimination, towards petty-crime, minor infringements and socially-relative crimes like verbal-offense, etc, and 2, more-serious crime, especially any stat.s gathered about re-offending at much longer-time-periods away from the end of the immediately-after monitoring -  i.e.  statistical LIMITS, on how much the consistencies of stat.s gathered in-the-immediate-after, SHOULD NOT have necessarily have implications for either longer-term gradual types of crime familiarization, nor crimes types that are more likely to lead to convictions and incarceration that they witness during their visits  -  i.e.  stat.s gathered in relation to 'safe' crime, that does not LEAD to incarcerations of the types that would expose them to the types of violence / risks they witness, can be ANTICIPATED intelligently, and also, as a result of underestimating such risk-assessment potentials of even the seemingly least intelligent of the participants, would limit the experimental breadths-of-capacity that might be realistically actually present in exceptional individuals, or more commonly, learnt-through experience ACQUIRED, in time periods after monitoring ceases.

Perhaps only much longer-term periodic stat.s collection of those completing(to a minimum exposure-shock level) the programs, as-well-as parallel smaller comparatives with high degrees of similarities but experimentally different exposures combined with different risks, might get more reliable impact differentiation - blending all the results together, at the same time as not differentiating between petty/common types of crime, and those that are LIKELY to result in chances of ending up in similar incarceration, does not even seem to be a experimental DESIGN, that should MATCH what the aims of the program are for -  primarily, the prevention of SERIOUS crimes, compared to petty.

At least, going-over what stat.s already exist, to categorically separate the re-offending for-petty, compared to more serious, could even yield clear advantages in relation to the reduction of more-serious, to the detriment (trade-off acceptance) of more-petty.

It's not DENYing the stat.s that already exist, it'd just be re-FOCUSING and clarifying, on which-PURPOSES need to match which stat.s represent what was being aimed-at-to-be-reduced, and at the same time, as making a more useful double-parallel-set to be ABLE to compare with already-differentiated measurements, compared to what cannot be used BEFORE differentiation/splitting what has already been collected.

It reads as a INCOMPLETE analysis or re-relating of the RELEVANCE of what stat.s were collected , if undifferentiated SINGULAR-grouping of the re-offending after the program, is supposed to be being received by the scientific community, AS, relevant, to-especially, the more serious crimes, when in-discriminant statistical blurring, is a experimental design flaw/limit.

Continuing DELIBERATE choosing-of limited design, could be hypothesized as a evasive-behavior, itself - i've never worked in prisons, but why KEEP using a limited-design? However much money has ever been spent on endless re-analysis of existing stat.s, seems like 100% wasted money, if the initial design had un-differentiated collection or conversion INTO categories/classes of crimes at the very least, even if as-it-happened, ongoing stat.s collection was problematic (and would-be - numbers dwindle, etc, but OVERALL differences might still exist, between petty/serious, even if you had to increase the margins of error / accuracy deviation). 120.18.235.91 (talk) 22:12, 23 January 2023 (UTC)