Iron Bars DOTH a Prison Make 1 Description of a Correctional Setting

This paper presents a description of environmental contingencies in a maximum security correctional setting and includes an examination of the behavioral interactions between security, case managers and inmates. How problems are generated by the physical environment, how court-mandated changes in staff activities affect the work itself, and how verbal and nonverbal environmental events interact in this setting to produce serious problems for those living/working in such a setting are described. B. F. Skinner (1953, p. 335) said," A controlling agency, together with the individuals who are controlled by it, comprises a social system ... and our task is to account for the behavior of all participants." The aim of this paper is to consider the environmental contingencies that appear to maintain various behaviors-verbal and nonverbalcommonly encountered in a maximum security state penitentiary housing approximately 3700 male felons, with about one-third of these labelled mentally retarded offenders. The description arises from the author's observations made while serving as a consultant to the mentally retarded offender program . The author spent 25-30 hours/week on a cellblock over an 18-month period. Paraphrasing Hyten and Bums (1986) who said that " ... the best place to develop an account of social interaction is with the study of social interaction (p.165)", the best place to study variables conducive to criminal behavior is in an environment housing criminals. Punishment in this type setting is not viewed as a procedure designed to affect the probability of behavior so much as it is a way of making the prisoner "pay for his crime" (ACA, Part I; McDowell & Thygusen, 1975). The rationale most openly adhered to in sentencing offenders is an appeal to justice for members of society, deterrence of future criminal behavior, and punishment. Penal theory (Grupp, 1984) argues that the criminal deserves pain, and that some form of punishment is an effective method of behavior control and suppression. Bartol (1980) points out that society has been led to believe that the threat and fear of punishment will act as a potent deterrent to antisocial behavior; that punishment applied directly to the offender should deter him or her personally from future violations. In this paper based on the author's observations, prisons are viewed as systems whose "raison detre" arises from this view. This paper will examine the behaviors of three groups of persons working in this environment: 1) security, whose job it is to monitor inmate behavior, protect all inmates and all prison personnel; 2) case managers, who also monitor inmate behavior but who function as inmate advocates; 3) inmates, the involuntary residents in this environment, who have been deprived of any privacy, normal access to goods and services, heterosexual relationships, personal security, and realistic, appropriate input into any decision-making regarding their future plans and any control over their current environment . This paper will describe contingencies in which security, case managers, and inmates participate that appear to control each others' behavior; most of the contingencies are aversive and I believe may help to explain why current efforts at rehabilitation in many correctional settings has failed and may continue to fail in their stated goal of returning the criminal to society and keeping him there . Responses and Consequences While everybody's behavior in this correctional setting appears to be under aversive control, the staff leave the system after 8-1/2 hours and have the chance to behave in a variety of ways likely to produce positive reinforcers. The inmates do not have these opportunities. In fact, the inmates have little opportunity to produce reinforcing ev en ts . Events that might be worth behaving to obtain h ave bee n mandated by law (e.g., opportunities to recrea te, atten d school, attend group therap y sessions) and oftentimes these appear to be neutral or irrelevant environment al even ts in the context of a correctional setting. For example, so ma ny inmates have refused to attend group therap y that coffee and cigarettes are sometimes offered as inducemen ts to in crease attendance. Events that might be used as reinforc er s and punishers are rarely, if ever, de livered con tin gen tly or immediately after appropriate beha vior occurs. On the othe r hand, inmate behaviors considered ina ppro pri ate by p riso n Author footnote : Correspondence with regard to this article should be sent to the author at the Center for Behavior Analysis, P.O . Box 13438, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas 76203 1 ~e title claiming that iron bars do make prisons is in disagreement with the idea expressed by Richard Lovelace . In his poem, "To Althea, From Pnson," he states "stone walls do not a prison make , nor iron bars a cage. " personnel (e.g., yelling at staff, threatening another inmate while both are located in separate cells) appear to produce immediate results as well as delayed consequences. For instance, when an inmate threatens another inmate or a staff member, a security person almost always goes immediately to that inmate's cell, stands in front of it and threatens the inmate with dire consequences (e.g., cell restriction), reminding the inmate of what will happen if such behavior continues, and usually lecturing the inmate on what he should have been doing . The frequency of such inmate behavior suggests that security's hostile reaction is reinforcing the inmate's behavior. The predicted cell restriction may not occur for 36 hours and possibly never. "Pushing the guard's button" seems worth the risk of cell restriction. Turning to relations among staff, security and case managers, officially described as co-workers, behave toward each other as adversaries. They rarely talk to each other except to recount instances of prohibited, hostile, or aggressive inmate behavior. When the staff "explain" inmate behavior, it is often attributed to the inmate's racial make-up (and, therefore, assumed to be immutable). The continual focus on "problem" behavior appears to predispose the staff to respond only to "problem" behavior. Thus, productive behavior (here defined as behavior that results in a product that would benefit inmates, staff, or members of the free world culture) occurs at a low rate in both inmates and staff, and then its occurrence is neither observed nor responded to. Generally, the objective of the personnel in this correctional environment appears to be to prevent or consequate unwanted inmate behavior rather than to arrange an environment that might, over time, result in prisoner behavior that would be reinforced in a free world setting. Problems Generated by the Physical Environment Arrangement of the Physical Environment A great deal of attention is paid to developing rules (TDC Disciplinary Rules and Procedures for Inmates, 1986) proscribing inmate behaviors considered inimical to safe prison operation (e.g ., sexual relations among inmates, threats to inflict harm, conspiring to engage in a specified behavior). Ironically, these rules are then worked against by the physical setting itself . Research (Toch, 1977; Farbstein & Wener, 1982; Ekland-Olson, Barrick, & Cohen, 1983) has indicated that arrangement of the physical environment in a prison can contribute to the probability of certain behaviors over others. In this state penitentiary the environment frequently occasions those particular behaviors that are prohibited by IRON BARS DOTH A PRISON MAKE I Janet Ellis I 5 state law and are punishable offenses according to local prison regulations. The following paragraphs will describe structural features which encourage the very behavior the prison system adjures.