True Films 3.0 - Kevin Kelly

Scared Straight!
In 1978 a bus-load of cocky juvenile delinquents are given a day off from
school and sent to visit a federal maximum prison for an afternoon as a
field trip. They are locked up for in a cell a half an hour. Then the designated
“lifers” in jail proceed to scare the air out of the kids with a most
graphic, explicit and X-rated picture of what awaits them inside and what
their lives will be like if they stay on their current path. The kids, all hardened
punks by 17, come out shaking. Like the documentary The Farm: Life
Inside Angola Prison (p.57), it’s a picture of what to avoid. But unlike most
films, it doesn’t stop there. The filmmakers return 20 years later. They
track down each of the 15 kids and all of the convicts lifers and re-interview
them to see what effect this encounter had. It is simply astounding
that all but two of the kids turned their lives around 180 degrees after
that one afternoon. It was the most important hours of their lives. Each
person attributes the fact they are still alive to that brief meeting. It
changes the lifers too. Even those who backslid have remarkable stories
about what happened in those few minutes. The film is moving. It gives
hope. And the movie itself is almost as good as a visit by lifers. Show it to
a kid at risk that you know.
By Arnold Shapiro
1978, 90 min.
Available from Amazon
Rent from Netflix
On the way in, the kids are full of
themselves, ready to mock the dumb
cons. Then they meet the one-eyed
grunt who screams in their face.
149