WFLD Channel 32 - Scared Straight! (Part 5, 1979)

Here's Part 5 of the controversial Academy Award-winning documentary Scared Straight! (hosted and narrated by Peter Falk) as aired on WFLD Channel 32. This was from an "encore presentation." Includes:

Scared Straight! zooming title bumper, with another shot of a cell door with inmate inside closing

"Life Sentence - Murder" starts off the bat by threatening to "turn [the] teeth" of one delinquent "upside down," then demands to know whose shoes are whose before going on about his account of the horrors of life behind bars and how only the toughest survive. He gives an account of an 18-year-old female prisoner who had been molested 11 times by other women since she'd been incarcerated, and then has one of the girls in the audience kicked off the stage. He speaks of what juveniles are expected to face in prison, and how he was once a juvenile himself; at one point he berates one of the juveniles for wanting and trying to be like him.

"37 Years - Armed Robbery" starts off by forcing one of the teens to read a newspaper headline of a stabbing death of an inmate inside a prison cell, and then reminds them why they're in this room at this moment. He compares the juveniles in a judge's courtroom to dogs who do their stuff on a carpet or other priceless items in a house. He brings up the unspeakable brutality imposed on prisoners by other prisoners on a daily basis.

Next, "30 Years - Murder" challenges one teen to show how tough he is - and the subject fails miserably in "30 Years' " estimation. He says all prison life offers is "humiliation, degradation [and] alienation," and assigns each teen a number ("You're number one, you're number two," etc.) to drive home his point about the prison system.

He is followed by "Life Sentence - Murder" who passes out cards with phone numbers to those teens who want them - and essentially says God help those who don't want the cards.

Next, "Life & 12 Years - Murder & Robbery" says he doesn't want to see any of the teens in the audience again, and drives home how they've "got to listen" and anybody who doesn't is a "God d*** fool." His talk ends this long segment.

Afterwards, outside the prison grounds, various teens are interviewed with a very different attitude from before they arrived, explaining how they had been spooked and humbled by the presentation by the lifers, and how they wouldn't want to go back. One of the teens vows to "get a job" after this harrowing session.

We then go to a man in a business suit who, Falk explains, was a prison official interviewed two days after the session; the official says the teens were all quiet and uneasy, and one of them got so sick while in the car back that he barfed outside during a stop. (As he's speaking, the lower-third station ID is shown again briefly.) He finishes by noting that the streets where gangs usually hang out were deserted after this presentation.

This segment concludes with Falk inside the prison, promising a look at the youths three months after this session.

This aired on local Chicago TV on Sunday, May 20th 1979 during the 10:00pm to 11:30pm timeframe.

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