![]() ET on A&E, is one of several set in a Maryland facility. But their lifestyle don’t have to be what we choose for ourselves,” an inmate tells a teenager in the Jessup episode. “Everybody that’s in here usually comes from a broken home, man, a broken family, where their mothers and fathers got trapped in the lifestyle. ![]() “The only accurate studies that are actually being done on 21st-century programs are mine-are my shows,” Shapiro said.īut at the end of the episode, inmates typically sit down to have individual conversations with the teenagers, talking to them in calm, friendly voices. The teenagers-who are selected not by producers but by counselors who work with the show’s producers, and who agree to be on camera-sometimes seem proud of their crimes or behavior, entering the prison with a smirk that is quickly shouted off their faces by inmates. Those moments are interspersed with biographical segments introducing us to several of the teenagers and their parents, explaining what they’ve done. At the beginning of one filmed at Maryland’s Jessup prison, a 50-year-old man convicted of first-degree murder barks into a 17-year-old dropout’s face, “Don’t smile at another man in prison, ‘cause if you smile at another man in prison, that makes them think that you like them, and for you to like another man in prison, something seriously is wrong with you.” Moments later, in the shake-down room, where prisoners are strip-searched, a 35-year-old serving a life sentence for armed robbery and attempted murder explains the search process in detail and yells, “How does that sound? A grown man looking at another man’s butthole! Do you want anyone looking in your butthole?” Yet the episodes themselves do emphasize the horrors of prison life more than discussion. They include “a significant counseling component” and inmates “talk to the kids about their personal issues and their choices and consequences,” he said. That’s because programs don’t exist to scare kids. ![]() "Now, the programs themselves are much more comprehensive," Shapiro told The Daily Beast. Shapiro says the programs that took the name of his documentary and those featured on the A&E series are very different.
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