Behaviour Modification In Custody Flashcards
Token economy is a form of therapy where tokens are given as secondary reinforcers when an offender performs desirable behaviour. The tokens can be exchanged for primary reinforcers. Target behaviours and primary reinforcers must be clearly defined and it is quite a complex system.
Tokens can be taken away for any undesirable behaviour as a form of punishment.
Through shaping target behaviours gradually increase in complexity from easily achievable to more difficult ones.
A key study by Hobbs and holt studied the token economy with young delinquents. The aim was to reduce inappropriate social behaviour. The staff were given intensive training to identify any target behaviours. 125 boys In 4 cottages were observed. One cottage acted as a control. The boys behaviour was recorded daily on a chart. They found an average increase of 27% in social behaviour and found no change in the control.
The token economy has advantages over other methods of rehabilitation. The approach is clearly defined and relatively simple to implement. If prison staff can think about what behaviours are desirable and increase such behaviours the prison environment can be improved. It can be implemented without trained psychologists and provides a means of controlling unmanageable behaviour. However a difficult aspect to it is that sufficient pre planning needs to go into setting up a token economy and staff must remain consistent in the way they reward tokens therefore staff should be intensive trained. This therefore suggests that although the tep is clear and should be easy to implement it may be too time consuming as sufficient pre planning has to be done and staff have to be trained. This reduces the efficiency of prison systems.
An advantage of the programme is that it has been very successful in schools and autism but has been less successful with prison populations. At first it was very successful in prison but as time passed it became less successful and fell out of favour. In the U.K. it was limited to using with young offenders. Older offenders any feel as though the programme is patronising and so they may not have any motivation and not feel engaged with the programme. The successfulness of the programme in schools does not help deal with offending behaviour in prisons. Also whether it helps decrease recidivism is greatly questioned because studies do not focus on what happens once the prisoner is released so recidivism may be high. The programme is mainly seen as a way for managing behaviour and creating calm in an institute
There is also a problem with individual differences. Some people respond better to operant conditioning than others. Programmes with young delinquents have been reasonably successful but there has been less success with violent offenders. Research research found that young offenders who had been trained with a token economy were less likely to reoffend after one year. However with older offenders 50% still reoffends. This therefore reduces the effectiveness of the programme as it can only help reduce recidivism in a small range of criminals and not all of them.
There is also a major issue with the violation of human rights because an individuals behaviour is being manipulated not always with their agreement. This can be overcome with procedures and goals being agreed upon by prisoners themselves and the programme being periodically reviewed. Nevertheless objections still remain about basic necessities being taken away from prisoners which raises severe ethical concerns. Some prisoners are not able to earn any tokens as they can’t control their behaviour and so are denied any privileges. In addition the use of punishment to earn tokens is unethical and counter the goals of rehabilitation. Some establishments include punishments as part of the token economy which can lead to the collapse of such systems.
