Scared Straight!

The documentary records a programme in which prisoners tell young people who have got into trouble about the horrors of prison life. The camera stays inside the session; the shouting, the threats and the reactions of the young people are given uncut. The film does not follow whether the programme works and does not show what became of the young people afterwards; it takes the programme’s own premise as given. For that reason the account stands as a record rather than as a conclusion. Its fifty two minutes are built around a single session. The film was taken into preservation by an archive. Arnold Shapiro’s American documentary was completed in 1978.