For almost 15 years, Leonard Levy has been touring the South with his anti-violence program,“The Funeral Is Cancelled.” By using actors in a live re-enactment depicting scenes of gang violence, drug abuse and police brutality, he hopes to send a powerful message for youth. The purpose of the program is to reach young people who are either headed down the wrong path or may be tempted to take that path.

The program has drawn praise from adults in the communities where it has been performed. To what extent it will prove effective with the kids is uncertain.

Whether it is mocked-up drunken driving crash scenes with bloodied teens playing “dead” or watching drug danger school assemblies or church Halloween scenes depicting what hell is like, programs designed to frighten kids into good behavior have been around for decades.

How effective are they, though? The motivation for using scare tactics seems relatively straightforward: Well-meaning adults focus on creating fear and anxiety in the hopes those emotions will prevent risky behavior in youth.

Based on my own experiences, I have doubts about the long-term effectiveness of this strategy.

As a kid growing in the 1970s, I was exposed to two programs designed the scare the be-jeebers out of kids in order to return them to the path of righteousness.

When I was about 12, the pastor at the little Baptist church my family attended announced on Sunday morning that there would be an airing of a Christian movie at the evening service.

The film was based on a sermon by some fire-and-brimstone Southern pastor who was particularly obsessed with the threat of communism. “If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?” warned of the dangers facing the United States from communist infiltrators, interspersing scenes from the pastor’s sermons with vignettes depicting the violent persecution of Christians after the United States had fallen under a brutal Communist regime.

Unlike the “Red Dawn” movie, there was no plucky band of teens taking on the commies. It was total capitulation. Scenes of Chinese communist soldiers driving bamboo stakes in one ear and out the other on those who would not recant Christianity and convert to Communism were so disturbing that I had nightmares for days. The pastor said the only way this future could be avoided was for young people to turn away from alcohol, drugs, dancing, sex and R-rated movies.

I wasn’t at all sure about the connection between Communism and all that fun stuff, but I did give up dancing. Fortunately, that’s all it took for me not to become a Communist.

At the end of the decade, another film — this one a documentary — became a sensation. “Scared Straight” followed a group of juvenile delinquents who spent three hours among actual convicts in New Jersey’s Rahway State Prison. A group of inmates known as the “lifers” berated, screamed at, and terrified the young offenders in an attempt to “scare them straight,” so that those teenagers will avoid prison life.

In no time, troubled teenagers were being bused to prisons all over the country, loosely following the script of the documentary.

In 1978, I was editor of the school newspaper at Itawamba Junior College in Fulton. I was given the opportunity join a group of a dozen or so kids who were bound for a daytrip to Parchman.

I was only a couple of years older than the kids, none of whom seemed particularly troubled or dangerous. We didn’t get to see much of the actual prison. For the next few hours, a half-dozen inmates came into the prison’s visitors area one by one and proceeded to scream, holler, beg, plead, snarl and invade personal space of the poor kids. I had never seen people be that angry without cussing.

Then we all got on the bus and went back to Fulton.

In truth, all that would probably have been needed was eating lunch at Parchman. The thought of eating that slop every day was all the motivation anyone should need to stay out of prison.

Maybe “The Funeral Is Cancelled” will have the desired effect, but it seems too easy, too quick a fix to me. Effective prevention is more complicated that simply saying, “Drugs are horrible and this is what will happen to you if you take them” or “violence is terrible. See all this blood?”

There’s no easy solution. It requires diligence and awareness by parents. Knowing where your kids are and who they’re with at all times is probably the most important prevention strategy.

I wish watching a program, a movie or a documentary would fix it. I really do.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

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