Scared Shitless!

This is a must see fim / documentary for every single teenager, irrespective of country, race, rich or poor who thinks he/she is invincible. It's a simple fact of life, you cross the line, you're going down. Crime does not pay. This documentary is a hard look at what happens in prisons; the systematic decline of the human mind subjected to extreme conditions. Loss of freedom and the ability to live without looking over your shoulder are just a premonition at what follows on the inside of a 30 foot wall enclosed supermax facility.

A group of convicts in NJ got together in the late 1970s, decided to reach out and help control juvenile crime. They called themselves 'the Lifers.' These convicts were either serving life sentences or a minimum of 25 years for crimes varying from armed robbery, battery to murder in the first degree. The amazing fact and motive for these felons was to show juveniles the uglier side of prison life by inducing fear which would change the otherwise glorified image of prison time. Hosted by Danny Glover and Peter Falk this film contains a recording of one such session in 1978 where convicts came face to face with juvenile delinquents and gave them hard talk. Anybody who watches or has watched this documentary will know what I mean by hard talk.

The film then goes on to show snippets of interviews that took place in 1988, ten years later and a second set of interviews after an additional 10 years. These interviews feature the same convicts as well as the kids who were present in the first recording. It's amazing to see how 80% of the juveniles decided to turn their lives around; get jobs or go to school and stop commiting crime. The downside are the few who were unflinched by the experience and went on to become full time criminals. All in all Scared Straight is an amazing piece of docurama which endorses an extreme yet effective way to correct the wrongful notions of crime glorification.