From punishment to rewards? Treatment dilemmas at a youth detention home
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474514548788 |
| Author | Anna G Franzén,Rolf Holmqvist |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Punishment & Society
2014, Vol. 16(5) 542–559
! The Author(s) 2014
From punishment to
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rewards? Treatment
DOI: 10.1177/1462474514548788
pun.sagepub.com
dilemmas at a youth
detention home
Anna G Franze´n
Stockholm University, Sweden
Rolf Holmqvist
Linko¨ping University, Sweden
Abstract
The present article analyses staff members’ discourses on the treatment method token
economy, as it is implemented at a detention home for young men. The study draws on
interviews with eight staff members and on participant observations at the detention
home. Using discursive psychology, the analysis centers on the staff members’ own
constructions of token economy as well as paradoxes and dilemmas that appear in
their talk. Two paradoxes were found: (1) paradox of transparency and interpretation;
token economy is objective and transparent, but requires interpretative work over
time; and (2) paradox of rewards and punishments; tokens are rewards, but they can
be ‘zeroed’ or withdrawn in order to limit undesirable behavior. Further, the analysis
showed that both paradoxes invoke a principal ideological dilemma of control –
freedom, which staff members attempt to resolve by positioning the young men as
responsible for their own actions and themselves as subordinate parties in the outcome
of ‘objective’ token economy practices.
Keywords
behavior modification, discipline, ideological dilemmas, juvenile delinquents, residential
treatment for youth, responsibilization
Corresponding author:
Anna G Franze´n, Stockholm University, Stockholm, SE-10691, Sweden.
Email: anna.gradin.franzen@buv.su.se
Franze´n and Holmqvist
543
Introduction
Present day penology has been described as being characterized by incoherence and
high volatility (see Garland, 1996; O’Malley, 1999; Rose, 1999, 2000). One major
dilemma is that between control and a disciplinary mode of power (which produces
docile bodies: compliant subjects, through surveillance and calculated distribution
of bodies, as described by Foucault, 1977), and, what Rose (1999, 2000) calls, the
new ‘advanced’ liberal rationalities which involves an emphasis on active and
responsibilized individuals, who are involved in their own rehabilitation through
self-governing (Garland, 1997; Hannah-Moffat, 2001; Rose, 2000). The goal of
social control organizations within this rationality is to produce not only compliant
subjects, but enterprising subjects who willingly engage in introspection and self-
monitoring (Garland, 1997; Rose, 2000).
This is for instance seen in young-offender facilities. In a study of the local
culture of punishment at one such facility in Canada, Gray and Salole (2006)
found that neo-conservative practices (including discipline and punishment with
the goal being an individual who willingly complies to what is expected) and neo-
liberal practices (including an enterprise ideal, in which residents are to be active in
their own rehabilitation) coexisted at the facility. The authors conclude that at local
levels, ‘there are ‘‘partial approaches’’ where different models combine and inter-
twine, resulting in a unique model of penalty’ (Gray and Salole, 2006: 678).
Inderbitzin (2007a) has highlighted the conflicting roles and responsibilities of
staff members at a juvenile maximum-security facility for violent offenders, follow-
ing a combination of a rehabilitative rhetoric of juvenile justice and a somewhat
punitive reality in the institution. In practice, the staff members struggled to bal-
ance the uncomplementary roles arising from the dual responsibilities of providing
both treatment and custody.
Further, the dilemma of producing free and responsible individuals in a forced
environment, has been highlighted by Cox (2011). It has been argued that the
movement to neo-liberalist governing within correctional institutions may be
seen, for example, in programs of transformation involving psychological tech-
niques and focusing on ‘the relations that humans have with themselves’
(Rose, 2000: 334). Here, clients are handled as responsible and rational individuals
and encouraged toward self-government (see Cox, 2011). One example is the popu-
larity of cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) in prisons and juvenile institutions.
However, in her study of youth going through behavioral change programs in
secure residential facilities in the USA, Cox (2011) argues that young offenders
in confinement will never fully be able to exercise the will and agency that CBT
programs aim for. The program promises to liberate the youth through their own
responsibility taking, but simultaneously encourages their submission to authority
and provides few opportunities for them to express the self-control they are urged
to exercise.
In the present study, such dilemmas are explored in a youth detention home by
examining the local treatment culture, as it is talked into being by staff members
while discussing implementation of the treatment method token economy (TE).
544
Punishment & Society 16(5)
Discipline and responsibilization – the case of token economy
Token economy is a behavioral reinforcement system in which tokens are allotted
on the basis of clients’ adherence to specific rules of comportment (Spiegler and
Guevermont, 2003). Token systems have a long history as treatment and motiv-
ational tools in rehabilitative and educational settings, as well as in psychiatric
institutions (Kazdin, 1978, 1982), and in prison settings (e.g. Liebling, 2008).
Presently, behavioral reinforcement programs are common in residential treatment
of ‘disruptive’ youth, in many, if not most, residential programs in the USA and
also in Sweden (Schwab, 2008: 17). Reinforcement programs may have different
formats, like the Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS) system
(Sprague et al., 2013), a system that is rapidly being implemented from schools
to institutions. A recent research review found rather few studies, and of varying
quality, that indicated modest effects of token economy in youth institutions
(James et al., 2013).
Few studies of token economy or similar programs have been conducted from a
qualitative framework. Though sparse, these have shown that despite the pro-
grams’ apparent simplicity (i.e. positive behavior: positive reinforcement), in prac-
tice, they are much less straight-forward when it comes to managing conflicts and
enforcing rules (e.g. Buckholdt and Gubrium, 1979; Kivett and Warren, 2002;
Liebling, 2000). This might be due to the necessarily subjective element of inter-
preting both the guidelines and the behavior of the clients (Buckholdt and
Gubrium, 1979; Kivett and Warren, 2002). For example, in work on motivational
systems in prison, Liebling (2000) points out that the translation of rules into
action is always an interpretative matter. Staff members were found to enforce
the rules selectively, which was crucial for ‘the smooth flow of the prison’ as well
as for staff–inmate relationships (Liebling, 2000: 344).
In a study of governmental power, token economy is interesting since it may be
understood as embodying modes of both disciplinary control and of the new
‘advanced’ liberal rationalities. For instance, in their study of a group home for
delinquent boys, Kivett and Warren (2002) argue that such behavior modification
systems epitomize a totalizing institutional gaze, controlling bodies in time and
space. Crewe (2007), however, found that a similar system (Incentives and
Earned Privileges program; a behavioral rehabilitative program aimed at altering
prisoner behavior through the use of rewards) implemented in the UK prison
system also works by responsibilizing prisoners, inviting them to become entrepre-
neurs of their own rehabilitation. Here prisoners are encouraged to take responsi-
bility for their own actions and their rehabilitation by ‘inciting and stimulating’
rather than constraining and suppressing (Crewe, 2007: 258). The system encour-
ages inmates to engage in self-regulations ‘in a way that feels freely chosen even
when highly structured’ and is part of the movement of responsibility from the
institution to the individual (Crewe, 2007: 258).
The present study specifically focuses on paradoxes and ideological dilemmas
that emerge in the staff members’ talk about token economy rules, and how these
Franze´n and Holmqvist
545
are handled. The analyses draw on discursive psychology (DP; Billig, 1997; Potter,
1996; Potter and Wetherell, 1987), and positioning theory (Davies and Harre´, 1990;
Wetherell, 1998).
Discursive psychology, ideological dilemmas and subject positions
DP investigates psychological issues from the participants’ own perspectives and as
situated within specific social practices. Instead of understanding psychological
phenomena as inner processes, existing beyond language and hidden inside people’s
minds, DP argues that these phenomena are constituted through social and dis-
cursive interaction and thus directs the attention to participants’ use of language in
interaction (Billig, 1997).
From this perspective, the concept of ideological dilemmas is useful in under-
standing the incoherency of contemporary penal policy and especially, practice.
The concept of ideological dilemmas was first introduced by Billig et al. (1988), as a
perspective on ideology and thinking, problematizing the notion of ideology as a
coherent, unified system of thought, as well as the tendency to understand social
actors as passive recipients of ideology of belief systems. Instead, here, ideology...
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