TEEN LIFERS

TEENS

What they need to do more of is the "SCARED STRAIGHT" program that was first aired on TV in 1978.

RAWHAY

It was a program where they took 10 first time offenders to Rawhay State Penitentiary and put them in a room full of prisoners, most serving Life Terms. There were no guards in the room, only the camera crew and the immates. The immates were allowed to talk to those first time offenders, all teens, how ever they wanted. They were told by the immates that they could be treated as the immates wanted and nothing would happen to the immates, since they are already serving life terms. They were told what life was like behind bars. The rapes, murders and abuse that goes on behind the prison walls.

Once, when the immmates were showing those teens how they are identifyed behind bars, with their immate cards, the one teen on the end of the long bench (and the cockiest of the teens) was told to look as pass along. He instead decides to flip through the entire stack of cards first, to which one immate came and knocked the cards from the teen's hand and repeated the order to look and pass along. Then he grabbed the teen by the back of the neck and forced him to pick up the dropped cards.
After the intense hour of talking to the immates, the teens were taken back out. Their activies were monitored following their visit to the prison and the only one to re-offend, was the one who wouldn't pass along the cards while he was looking at them.

I saw the program in following years with new groups but because of the intensity of the first encounter, the language was dialed back some and the immates weren't allowed to touch the teens, which I think lessened the effects of the program. Teens already have this notion that since they are teens, nothing can happen to them, the laws protect them. That's why they get in trouble like they do. They watch enough tv to know that as juveniles, they can go to juvenile detention centers until they are 18 and then they are free and their record is sealed.