Word: mod
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...heart of behavior mod lies in correct use of positive reinforcement, simply because this most closely approximates normal human behavior. Hundreds of parents of retarded and/or behavior-problem children have learned to use behavior mod to teach their children; many are grateful because it affords them a highly successful humanistic alternative to the degrading kinds of punishing methods they had earlier felt themselves reduced...
Quiet Design. "Behavior mod," as it is familiarly known, evokes flashing images of 1984 and A Clockwork Orange, complete with irresistible mind-bending techniques, drugs and, perhaps, brain surgery. In fact, the broad concept includes even the rudimentary punishment-reward systems long standard for prison guards, or, for that matter, parents, teachers and corporations. But a new legal concern rests on the fact that behavioral scientists have been quietly designing more detailed and sophisticated programs for prisons. Quietly, because behavior mod sets off something of an automatic aversion reaction of its own. Among recent legal actions...
...imposed on anyone who does not want it. On the other hand, there is some preliminary indication that the treatment may work -to the benefit of both the prisoner and society. If the voluntary program is ended, inmates who really do want to participate would lose out. Many behavior-mod programs "have some fairly good data of success with volunteers," says Norval Morris, director of the Center for Studies in Criminal Justice at the University of Chicago. But they have "a very low record of success with nonvolunteers...
...obstacle to keeping the programs genuinely voluntary is the tendency of prison administrators to see behavior mod as primarily a tool for maintaining order behind the walls. In many cases, says Illinois Legal Aid Lawyer Michael Deutsch, "the prisons take the programs over from doctors because it's a way of segregating the troublemakers." Roy Gerard, an assistant director of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, says flatly: "That's part of the consequence of committing a crime. You've automatically volunteered for the certain way an institution...
...legislators and judges would produce effective guarantees of voluntariness and ban physical abuse and "excessive" psychological pressure to modify the behavior of nonvolunteers, then much of the controversy surrounding behavior mod might well dissipate. That would leave more energy for trying to turn promising programs into full-fledged successes. In Denver, for instance, 18 incorrigible delinquents inhabit the CAT house, more formally known as the Colorado Closed Adolescent Treatment Center. The kids run their own modification program, with adult guidance. It has worked astonishingly well inside the institution. But "our biggest problem is getting the kids out of here," says...