Scared Straight (Juvenile Awareness Program, Rahway State Prison)
Also: Juvenile Awareness Project · Scared Straight! (1978 documentary) · Beyond Scared Straight (A&E, 2011-)
Program started in 1976 at Rahway State Prison, New Jersey, in which inmates serving life sentences confronted visiting teenagers about prison life to frighten them out of crime. A 1978 documentary made it famous and it was copied across the US and abroad; randomized trials then found that participants offended more than teenagers who got nothing, yet the format returned as a television series in 2011.
- Years
- 1976–now
- Country
- United States
- Topic
- Youth violence delinquency
- Asks people to
- Never startStop
- Strategy
- Fear appeal
- Channel
- EventsInterpersonalTV
- Audience
- YouthAt-risk and already-delinquent teenagers, almost all boys, brought on prison visits; plus the national TV audience of the 1978 film and the A&E series
Evidence
ExperimentalHarmful
Cochrane review of 9 randomized or quasi-randomized trials (8 US states, 1967-1992, 946 youths): in a meta-analysis of the 7 studies with official offending data, the programs increased offending compared with no intervention (fixed-effect OR 1.68, 95% CI 1.20-2.36; random-effects OR 1.72, 1.13-2.62), robust to sensitivity analyses; the authors conclude the programs are more harmful than doing nothing (Petrosino 2013, first published 2002). Finckenauer's 1982 evaluation of the Rahway program found no benefit, and the film's claim that most of the visiting teens were 'scared straight' was not supported.
Sponsor (who paid)
- Lifers' Group, Rahway State Prison NGO, creator (inmate group)
- New Jersey Department of Corrections (Rahway State Prison) State local government, host
Credits (who made it)
Not recorded yet.
Related campaigns
Sources
- Petrosino A, Turpin-Petrosino C, Hollis-Peel ME, Lavenberg JG. 'Scared Straight' and other juvenile awareness programs for preventing juvenile delinquency. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2013;(4):CD002796 evaluation · 2013 · DOI 10.1002/14651858.CD002796.pub2 · PMID 23862186
- Petrosino A, Turpin-Petrosino C, Buehler J. 'Scared Straight' and other juvenile awareness programs for preventing juvenile delinquency. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2002;(2):CD002796 evaluation · 2002 · DOI 10.1002/14651858.CD002796 · PMID 12076450
- Finckenauer JO. Scared Straight! and the Panacea Phenomenon. Prentice-Hall, 1982 (NCJRS abstract 80599) evaluation · 1982
- Washington State Institute for Public Policy. Scared Straight: benefit-cost results evaluation
Research notes
Created 2026-10-23 as a counterexample for docs/what-good-looks-like.md. Cochrane findings paraphrased from the PubMed abstracts; titles, authors and issue numbers checked against PubMed 2026-10-23. Finckenauer, WSIPP and the 2011 OJJDP warning come from search results; their pages were not opened. A Norwegian copy (Ullersmo prison, 1992-96) was mentioned in one search result; not verified. The topic value youth-violence-delinquency was added to docs/taxonomy.md for this case.