The first documentary I ever remember seeing was Scared Straight by Arnold Shapiro. It was about a program for juvenile delinquents that took groups of law-breaking teenagers into a state prison for a day to be “mentored” by a group of hardcore convicts serving minimum life sentences or longer. (I should point out here that prison mentoring is a whole lot different than regular old mentoring.)
I was about 9 or 10 years old and it was billed as a major TV event. They told parents to watch it with their kids. It was shown uncut and uncensored on primetime TV with a bunch of warnings about the language and subject matter. And it scared the living ...
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