Maidgethma Wonderfully offbeat film!

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

guer-04780 This show is a blatant excuse for a prison documentary. Of course, I get the idea that people have done things so awfully wrong, but going to jail for it is just crossing several lines.People have become depressed, just because of this show. I'm one of the lucky few. It makes people more insecure about what they're doing and they're always going to say that they're going to get beaten and called names when they do the littlest thing wrong.Policemen always see children and teenagers as adults in this show. Homosexuality and abuse is the result of it. It just makes me want to have a loaded gun next to the active television, and just shoot an officer.Is there anything more I need to say about this aggravating and introverted show?

jbohemier61 Beyond Scared Straight is an outstanding show in which troubled teens are sent to jails around the country to see what its going to be like should they find themselves on the inside. Scare tactics are often used, but the effectiveness, while positive on most, falls far short for others. Frankly, I would love to see this program extended in such a manner that these kids REALLY get a taste of jail life. I think by picking these kids up in front of their friends by the local Sheriff's Departments upon exit from school on a Friday afternoon and dropping them back off to school on the following Monday morning just before the start of classes would be far more effective then giving them a half day experience going from one section of the jail to another. Today's kids are some of the most disrespectful ever, and with parents working longer and longer hours while trying to make a living like never before, many of these at risk kids are failing to receive the attention they need during the riskiest time of their lives. Today's kids roll their eyes, look the other way, bad mouth their parents and teachers like never before. They truly need a rude awakening. I think this can only be done in the most severe cases by letting them spend a full weekend in jail, where they should be treated as close to an inmate as possible while protecting them from injury.

MJPhoenix711 This has to be the worst show I've ever seen. The main premise is innocuous: to try to keep kids from stealing and being in gangs by giving them a reality check. The way they ended up doing this was beyond offensive (which should be the real title of the show.) Instead of making the kids have heart to heart talks with prisoners about why they should change their behavior, they took them to the "alternative sexuality" ward and used gay and trans inmates as a boogeymen to scare kids out of going to prison. The guards often threatened the kids by telling them they would be raped (which is NEVER okay), and made derogatory comments about transgender inmates ("do you want to be in here with a man who wants to be a women?") I can't imagine how harmful this was to the teens in their program who happen to be gay, bi, and trans themselves (a percentage of them certainly are.) I was supposed to watch this show wanting the kids to turn their lives around and change their acts. Instead, I wanted to join the kids in punching out the oppressive prison guards and start a riot. If anyone needs to be taught a lesson, it is not the teens, it is the guards.

djadrianleigh OK so back in 1978 when the world was a bit more naive about everything along came a TV Documentary Film called Scared Straight. First time ever two of the big cusswords that you just did not say on television was used. The Host/Narrator was Detective Columbo himself, Peter Falk. This was followed by Scared Straight 10 Years Later and 20 Years Later. The original Scared Straight inspired Jails and Prisons across the USA to start up their own version of the same program. Currently a made for TV version called Beyond Scared Straight is playing on A&E TV. Not as hard as the original version but it does the job of conveying what needs to be conveyed. Only reason this version seems a bit on the tame side is the fact A&E is owned by Disney Studios. If this show were to have been taken to say HBO or Showtime then it would be a no holds barred in your face version that brings back the harder elements that made the original version of Scared Straight work.The A&E Version has proved to be a success but also has drawn severe criticism for it's supposed endangering of the young juvenile offenders or "At Risk Teens" as they are called in pc terms. IMO Scared Straight is not hard enough for my liking. Today's teens are not like the teens of the 80s and 90s. Today they are smart mouth eye rolling idiots. Their parents are the children of my generation the 70s. Todays kids are raised on the idea that they would not be raised like the way grandma and grandpa did their parents. Their parents came from the old school home discipline ideology of "You're Grounded" and "Your dad is gonna put a belt strapping on your backside when he gets home."