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Managing Prisons Effectively: The Potential of Contingency Management Programs
Managing Prisons Effectively: The Potential of Contingency Management Programs
Publication year:
2011
| Cataloged on:
Feb. 07, 2013
ANNOTATION: “There has been increasing interest in the prison management policy area to promote a course of action that holds inmates more accountable for their actions. It has been proposed that inmates need more structure and discipline and engage in activities that will demonstrate they truly earn privileges leading to early release. This study draws attention to a long forgotten prison treatment literature known as contingency management [CM] (e.g., token economies) which has the potential to meet the goals of an “accountability” management perspective” (p. 1). A conservative estimate of the positive effect of CM on “institutional adjustment, educational and work related behaviors” was a 63-70%. CM programs “of all the treatment interventions available to correctional authorities … [provide] the best fit with the ethos of accountability type policies and the use of incentives to promote discipline, structure, and motivate inmates to earn the right to receive more privileges leading up to early release” (p. 10). Yet the disruption caused by CM on a prison’s culture and operations, make its utilization a matter not to be taken lightly.
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