Forensics - Dealing with offending behaviour: Behaviour Modification in Custody

Question 1

What does behaviour modification in prison involve?

Answer 1

Largely features token economies which are systems based upon operant conditioning principles, and mainly reinforcement.

Question 2

What is the effect of reinforcement in the context of custody?

Answer 2

Reinforcement (negative or positive) increases the likelihood of a desired behaviour being repeated. This means that selected socially-desirable behaviours are more likely to be repeated by offenders.

Question 3

When does an offender receive a token?

Answer 3

Every time they carry out a desired behaviour

Question 4

What makes the token a ‘secondary reinforcer’ ?

Answer 4

Its value is derived from it being able to be swapped for a ‘privilege’ or reward which is known as a primary reinforcer.

Question 5

What are some potential ‘rewards’ in prison? What type of reinforcement is this?

Answer 5

Exercise time outside of the prison grounds, or access to a favourite TV show. Through positive reinforcement the offender is more likely to repeat these desirable behaviours because they are motivated by achieving the same reward each time.

Question 6

Who demonstrated the effectiveness of token economies? How did they do this?

Answer 6

Hobbs and Holt (1976) studied 125 criminal male juveniles in the Alabama Boys Industrial School. They found that across 14 months there was a significant increase in the displaying of desirable behaviours for the majority of the boys . This suggests that token economy systems can be used to improve the running of prisons by decreasing the violence and conflicts within such a setting.

Question 7

What are the limitations of behaviour modification?

Answer 7

• In comparison to anger management, behaviour modification can be seen as only treating the proximal cause of offending. Whereas anger management can address the direct cause of offending. For example, behaviour modification only temporarily improves the behaviour of offenders, as long as they are motivated by rewards which need to be given immediately after the displayed behaviour (in order to avoid a sense of delayed gratification). However, these same rewards may not be present in life outside prison, because citizens are expected to abide to social norms and rules without always being rewarded directly. Therefore, behaviour management may be a short-term solution to offending behaviour
• The ethical basis of the use of token economies has been questioned. Notably by Moya and Achtenburg (1974). They took particular concern with the idea that participation in such schemes is compulsory in many prisons and failure to do so (maybe due to mental illness) would mean that prisoners are denied certain ‘rewards’ which may be seen as rights by many others e.g the chance to call home or have family visits. Therefore, a cost-benefit analysis should be conducted to assess the utility token economy systems.

Question 8

What is a strength of behaviour modification ?

Answer 8

+ Behaviour modification systems are that they are flexible in that they can change according to the aims of each institution and are easy to implement. For example, token economy systems used in psychiatric hospitals may be very different from those used in max-security prisons, and so as long as the implementation of the rules and tokens is consistent a significant improvement in prisoner conduct is
likely to be seen.