udies have been done on this topic, but many of the references discuss problems and positives of the Finckenauer study.The Lifers Group originally consisted of inmates in the New Jersey Rahway State Prison who were sentenced to twenty-five years or more. The original president and creator of the Lifers Group was Richard Rowe (Finckenauer 1982, pg. 67). The Lifers Group was created in part to counteract what these inmates saw as a stereotyped, Hollywood-type image of prisons and convicts held by the general public. This image, they felt stigmatized convicts as immoral and inhuman. In order to dispel what they saw as a false image, the Lifers wanted to try to prove that they could be useful and worthwhile people even though locked up in a maximum-security prison. (Finckenauer 1982, pg. 67).September of 1976 was the first time the program occurred. According to the Lifers group own letter to parents of adolescents who took part in the program (copy of form letter on page 80 in Finckenauers book), only one person out of over 155 juveniles was taken into custody after their meeting with the Lifers Group. A. Petrosino criticized this letter by saying that it wasnt an actual study with a control group and experimental group (Petrosino 1997, pg. 12). The issue that did not go unnoticed was that a large number of kids participating in the project had admittedly been neither delinquents nor even predelinquents(Finckenauer 1982, pg. 79). This lead to the study conducted by Finckenauer of future kids sent to the program by different youth organizations for delinquent behavior. If the kids are not delinquents or will not be delinquents in the future, it is difficult to discover the actual success rate of the program.In Part three of Finckenauers book on the scared straight program, he discussed his study methods. Many of the criticisms of this study were based on his skepticism of the program. L. Sherman when mentioning studies on shock ...
