This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Toch, H. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Essay: Punitiveness as "Behavior Management"

State University of New York, Albany, htoch{at}albany.edu

Behavior management plans (BMPs) are temporary deprivation experiences that have been advertised as promoting the discontinuance of habitual misbehavior in institutions. In practice, these interventions are often invoked in retaliation or as punishment when individual inmates are uncooperative or troublesome. In settings that already offer a rock-bottom quality of life—such as segregation units in prisons—BMPs reliably call for intolerably stressful conditions that tend to compromise the mental health of persons who are subjected to these conditions. The cycle is predictably exacerbated when the behavior that is targeted is symptomatic of mental illness in the first place, as is frequently the case.

Key Words: behavior modification • punishment • supermax • prisoners

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?