This made for TV movie lifts some of the inmates' speeches straight from the 1978 documentary "Scared Straight" about a program in which juvenile delinquents spend a couple of hours in a room with a group of felons from Rahway maximum security prison in New Jersey. It was thought, at the time, to perhaps be a "miracle cure" for juvenile offenders when the revolving door of juvenile justice was not working so well.
This drama takes that documentary, makes the prison someplace else besides Rahway, New Jersey, though it doesn't say where, and fleshes out the stories of the inmates involved as well as the juvenile delinquents, and even involves a high school couple in love - a pretty girl and petty thief and drug dealer (not exactly Romeo and Juliet) - with the girl's steelworker dad going to great lengths to keep his daughter away from the bad influence of a boyfriend.
The juvenile delinquents here all have somewhat sympathetic stories, because you wouldn't be likely to root for them if they were like the kids in the Scared Straight documentary. Cliff DeYoung plays the caring counselor of the delinquent kids who just can't find any way to get through their "tough guy" act until he is presented with the Scared Straight program. He overacts and over emotes a bit, but it is all in the made for TV movie tradition.
It is really a look back in so many ways - forget about the wide lapels, bell bottoms, and fro hair dos. For example, the middle class family where the dad is a steel worker. He is middle class, says he has "plenty of money", and seems unafraid of losing his job. Just ten years later you could probably make a movie about someone such as himself having the steel plant closed on him, not having the education to transition to another field, and having to work the night shift at a convenience store. But that is "another story".
It really is better than the current rating if you keep in mind it was made for TV 40 years ago and such productions were usually rushed.
