摘要：The aim of this systematic review was to assess the effects of programs comprising organized visits to prisons by juvenile delinquents (officially adjudicated or convicted by a juvenile court) or predelinquents (children in trouble but not officially adjudicated as delinquents), aimed at deterring them from criminal activity. We only considered studies that randomly or quasi‐randomly (i.e. alternation) assigned participants to conditions. Each study had to have a no‐treatment control condition with at least one outcome measure of “post‐visit” criminal behavior. Nine trials were eligible. The analyses show the intervention to be more harmful than doing nothing. The program effect, whether assuming a fixed or random effects model, was nearly identical and negative in direction, regardless of the meta‐analytic strategy. We conclude that programs like ‘Scared Straight’ are likely to have a harmful effect and increase delinquency relative to doing nothing at all to the same youths. Given these results, agencies we cannot recommend this program as a crime prevention strategy. Agencies that permit such programs, however, must rigorously evaluate them not only to ensure that they are doing what they purport to do (prevent crime) ‐ but at the very least they do not cause more harm than good to the very citizens they pledge to protect.
