'Scared Straight' and other juvenile awareness programs for preventing juvenile delinquency

Abstract

Background 'Scared Straight' and other similar programs involve organized visits to prison by juvenile delinquents or children at risk for criminal behavior. Programs are designed to deter participants from future offending through firsthand observation of prison life and interaction with adult inmates. These programs remain in use despite research questioning their effectiveness. This is an update of a 2002 review. Objectives To assess the effects of programs comprising organized visits to prisons by juvenile delinquents (officially adjudicated, that is, convicted by a juvenile court) or pre-delinquents (children in trouble but not officially adjudicated as delinquents), aimed at deterring them from delinquency. Search methods To update this review, we searched 22 electronic databases, including CENTRAL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Criminal Justice Abstracts, in December 2011. In addition, we searched clinical trials registries, consulted experts, conducted Google Scholar searches, and followed up on all relevant citations. Selection criteria We included studies that tested programs involving the organized visits of delinquents or children at risk for delinquency to penal institutions such as prisons or reformatives. Studies that had overlapping samples of juvenile and young adults (for example, ages 14 to 20 years) were included. We only considered studies that assigned participants to conditions randomly or quasi-randomly (that is, by odd/even assignment to conditions). Each study had to have a no-treatment control condition and at least one outcome measure of 'post-visit' criminal behavior.

Could scale-up of parenting programmes improve child disruptive behaviour and reduce social inequalities? Using individual participant data meta-analysis to establish for whom programmes are effective and cost-effective

“…When harms have been studied in psychosocial trials, they have mainly involved youth-focused interventions and have been defined as main effects in the unintended direction. 97,98 Recent systematic reviews of parenting interventions have not found evidence of harmful effects defined in this way. 12 Parents rarely report potentially harmful outcomes in qualitative studies; Morch et al 51 mention none, despite interviewing many parents for whom intervention was not successful.…”

Concepts and implications of altruism bias and pathological altruism

“…This lack of critical appraisal has been seen in vitally important areas such as the mitigation of posttraumatic stress disorder, the reduction of family violence, the elimination of racial prejudice, the reduction of sex differences in mathematics, and the lessening of adolescent behavior problems and drug use (64)(65)(66)(67)(68)(69)(70)(71). In one example, a therapy called "Critical Incident Stress Debriefing" was broadly implemented throughout the United States to reduce posttraumatic stress disorder, even though this costly program simply did not work and, in fact, sometimes worsened the very stress it was meant to resolve (67).…”

EMMIE and engineering: What works as evidence to improve decisions?

“…It is sobering to contrast the CMO theory-focused and theory-testing evaluation of the Comet crashes with the theory-specification and testing indifference of the meta-analysis of Scared Straight (Petrosino et al, 2002), which found that criminality seemed to be produced rather than reduced. The systematic review included a) no analysis of points where the scared straight theory might be wanting; b) no proposals for or tests of alternative theory that might explain the negative effects; and c) no findings identifying the sub-groups where mechanisms were activated to produce negative effects.…”