Token economy Flashcards
What type of theory informs this policy?
Individualistic theories
What specific theory informs this policy and why?
Bandura’s social learning theory as crime is learnt from peers and the prisoners imitate those around them.
What does this policy do?
Rewards prisoners who behave well with a fake prison currency.
What does the fake currency enable?
Enables prisoners to exchange tokens for a reward such as chocolate.
How does it work?
A prisoner will observe another inmate being rewarded with a positive sanction when they have desirable behaviour. This will encourage other inmates to imitate the behaviour.
What does the policy stop and how?
It aims to stop undesirable behaviour such as starting fights as they observe others not being rewarded for it.
What are the strengths of this policy?
It’s ethical. The tokens and rewards are privileges so it’s ok to withhold them as prisoners are still given their human rights.
It reduces disobedience, especially short term. Hobbs and Holt said young offenders were significantly better.
What are the weaknesses of this policy?
It doesn’t lead to long term changes in behaviour. It’s likely the positive behaviour will stop once there’s non reward.
It doesn’t work for everyone. Hobbs and Holt said the system is unfair as it’s based on how much the inmate is liked. It also wouldn’t work for those with bad social skills.
