Is the Scared Straight Program Still Active Today?

No, the Scared Straight program is not still active in any meaningful nationwide form. The original model, in which at-risk youth were brought into prisons for aggressive confrontations with inmates, has been largely discontinued across the United States. The federal government does not fund it, the National Institute of Justice rates the approach “Ineffective,”¹ and the handful of jail-based programs still operating in scattered jurisdictions look very different from what ran in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.

Where Things Stand Today

Several states shut their programs down in the early 2010s once federal warnings became harder to ignore. California and Maryland both suspended programs that had been featured on A&E’s Beyond Scared Straight, the reality series that was itself pulled in the mid-2010s amid controversy over the psychological harm participants experienced.

Some local sheriff’s departments still offer voluntary jail tours, and those should not be confused with the original program. A modern tour typically walks a group through a facility with staff escorts and no inmate contact. The original Scared Straight sessions deliberately placed juveniles in unsupervised, face-to-face encounters with inmates serving long sentences, who used graphic and often exaggerated stories about violence and sexual assault to try to frighten the youth away from crime.² Some programs went further and dressed juveniles in prison uniforms, holding them temporarily as if they were inmates. That version is gone.

Why the Federal Government Pulled Support

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which oversees federal juvenile justice policy, has been direct about its position. “However well intentioned these prison-visit programs may be, decades of research have shown that this approach is not only ineffective, but possibly harmful to youth,” the agency has stated. OJJDP does not fund Scared Straight programs and has flagged them as potential violations of federal law.³ A review published by the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services added that jurisdictions still running these programs “are at risk for causing harm to the very citizens they aim to help.”⁴

The legal problem is specific. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act requires “sight and sound” separation between juveniles and adult inmates. Youth cannot be housed near adult cells or share dining halls, recreation areas, or other common spaces with incarcerated adults.⁵ States that receive federal juvenile justice funding have to comply. A program designed around aggressive, direct contact between minors and adult inmates sits in obvious tension with that rule, which is why OJJDP has flagged these programs as potential violations.³

What the Research Found

The evidence against Scared Straight is unusually strong for social science. A systematic review of nine randomized controlled trials, published through both the Cochrane Collaboration and the Campbell Collaboration, found that these programs consistently increased offending among participants compared to doing nothing at all.⁶ Youth who went through the program committed more crimes afterward than similar youth who received no intervention whatsoever.

A preliminary review using raw percentage differences found that Scared Straight programs increased crime in the experimental group by between 1% and 28% compared to untreated controls.² The later meta-analysis calculated that participation raised the odds of reoffending to roughly 1.7 to 1.⁶ The Campbell Collaboration summary put it plainly: “Scared straight interventions cause more harm than doing nothing.”⁷

Individual studies back the pattern up. The original New Jersey evaluation followed participants for six months and found that 41% of program participants committed new offenses, compared to 11% of the control group. A California program tracked youth for twelve months and found that 81% of participants were later arrested, compared to 67% of controls.²

Researchers have offered several explanations. Exposure to prison culture can normalize criminal identity rather than discourage it. For some youth, surviving an intense confrontation becomes a badge of toughness. The experience can also traumatize participants. And a short, fear-based visit does nothing to address the actual drivers of juvenile delinquency: trauma, family instability, substance use, untreated mental health conditions, and poverty.

If You Were Looking to Enroll a Child

If you came here hoping to sign a child up for a Scared Straight program, the honest answer is that the option effectively no longer exists, and the research says you would not want it to. The confrontational approach feels like it should work, which is part of why it persisted for so long. The data say otherwise.

A better starting point is your local juvenile court or probation department. Ask about diversion programs, family-based therapy, and community interventions. Many jurisdictions now screen youth for underlying issues like trauma, learning disabilities, or mental health conditions before recommending a program, and approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy, Multisystemic Therapy, and mentoring have the kind of research backing that Scared Straight never had.⁸⁹

1
CrimeSolutions, National Institute of Justice. Practice Profile – Juvenile Awareness Programs (Scared Straight)
2
NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information). Scared Straight and Other Juvenile Awareness Programs for Preventing Juvenile Delinquency – PMC
3
OJJDP. OJJDP News at a Glance – March/April 2011
4
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Scared Straight and Other Juvenile Awareness Programs for Preventing Juvenile Delinquency
5
eCFR. 28 CFR 31.303 – Substantive Requirements
6
Cochrane Library. Scared Straight and Other Juvenile Awareness Programs for Preventing Juvenile Delinquency
7
Campbell Collaboration. Scared Straight and Other Juvenile Awareness Programs for Preventing Juvenile Delinquency
8
CrimeSolutions, National Institute of Justice. Program Profile – Multisystemic Therapy (MST)
9
Youth.gov. Diversion Programs