Maladaptive behavior?
This entry was originally posted on 22 July 2003 at 12:54 p.m.
Yesterday one of my coworkers and i were upstairs in the CJ department, delivering new computers to a couple of our PIs. On the way back down to our office, i noticed several book covers posted on a bulletin board in the main hallway. One of the covers was for Acting Out: Maladaptive Behavior in Confinement.
I haven't read the book, and most of what i know about it is based on a small handful of reviews and descriptions i've found on the web, so i really can't comment on the content. What struck me, then, was the assumption made in the title alone: that violent and noncompliant behaviors in prison are somehow maladaptive.
From some standpoints, this makes sense. After all, we put thousands of convicted criminals behind bars on a daily basis in the hope that eventually their prison time will transform them into upstanding citizens of this country by the time they are released.
It's a twisted, illogical, and downright absurd assumption.
Just to clarify things for layman and academic alike: prisons fail as reformatory institutions. They are structurally, socially, and psychologically incapable of transforming anyone into an upstanding citizen. The age-old idea of prison as penitentiary is long outdated. No one pays penance in prison. People in prison are simply removed from society, stripped of their rights, treated as less than human--and are yet expected to miraculously change their ways, as though punishment and incarceration will convince them that they really are good people beneath it all, that they really are able to conform to societal rules.
This logic works on the principle that treating a person badly will cause them to change their behavior, rather than reinforce it. It's a standard behaviorist line, which is fine--except that true behaviorism requires immediate punishment, not a year or two waiting for trial. The justice system in this country is simply not fast enough to employ behaviorist techniques. By the time the trial takes place and the sentence determined, it's too late: the punishment is no longer a response to the crime.
Prisons don't reform people. A convicted criminal sitting in prison is no more paying his "debt to society" than he is contributing to the country's economy--how can one truly give anything back to a society from which he is completely removed? Furthermore, the prison environment is so different from society as we know it that when a convict is released, he no longer understands how he's supposed to behave. The prison system has done plenty to show him what he's done wrong, but absolutely nothing to teach him how to change his behavior to match what society expects of any normal citizen. All prison does is incarcerate and punish--and it does a fairly miserable job of punishing (since the punishment rarely comes swiftly enough to be effective).
And yet we expect prison inmates to respond in nonviolent, conformist ways to their captors.
Look at it from an evolutionary perspective. You've got an organism (inmate) in an extremely harsh environment (prison). Conditions are such that the organism's survival is in question on a daily basis (threat from other inmates, guards, etc.), and that survival is ensured by being proactively or preemptively violent, or by doing things that boost one's "street cred" (granted, this is a simplified picture, but i think it's accurate enough for the purposes of this rant). From this perspective, violent and noncompliant behaviors are adaptive rather than maladaptive. The original assumption now sounds a bit like throwing a person into a lion's den and expecting them to hug the lion, doesn't it? Makes just about as much sense, too.
Once again, i can but shake my head at the unbelievable assumptions we academics make on a daily basis.
Yesterday one of my coworkers and i were upstairs in the CJ department, delivering new computers to a couple of our PIs. On the way back down to our office, i noticed several book covers posted on a bulletin board in the main hallway. One of the covers was for Acting Out: Maladaptive Behavior in Confinement.
I haven't read the book, and most of what i know about it is based on a small handful of reviews and descriptions i've found on the web, so i really can't comment on the content. What struck me, then, was the assumption made in the title alone: that violent and noncompliant behaviors in prison are somehow maladaptive.
From some standpoints, this makes sense. After all, we put thousands of convicted criminals behind bars on a daily basis in the hope that eventually their prison time will transform them into upstanding citizens of this country by the time they are released.
It's a twisted, illogical, and downright absurd assumption.
Just to clarify things for layman and academic alike: prisons fail as reformatory institutions. They are structurally, socially, and psychologically incapable of transforming anyone into an upstanding citizen. The age-old idea of prison as penitentiary is long outdated. No one pays penance in prison. People in prison are simply removed from society, stripped of their rights, treated as less than human--and are yet expected to miraculously change their ways, as though punishment and incarceration will convince them that they really are good people beneath it all, that they really are able to conform to societal rules.
This logic works on the principle that treating a person badly will cause them to change their behavior, rather than reinforce it. It's a standard behaviorist line, which is fine--except that true behaviorism requires immediate punishment, not a year or two waiting for trial. The justice system in this country is simply not fast enough to employ behaviorist techniques. By the time the trial takes place and the sentence determined, it's too late: the punishment is no longer a response to the crime.
Prisons don't reform people. A convicted criminal sitting in prison is no more paying his "debt to society" than he is contributing to the country's economy--how can one truly give anything back to a society from which he is completely removed? Furthermore, the prison environment is so different from society as we know it that when a convict is released, he no longer understands how he's supposed to behave. The prison system has done plenty to show him what he's done wrong, but absolutely nothing to teach him how to change his behavior to match what society expects of any normal citizen. All prison does is incarcerate and punish--and it does a fairly miserable job of punishing (since the punishment rarely comes swiftly enough to be effective).
And yet we expect prison inmates to respond in nonviolent, conformist ways to their captors.
Look at it from an evolutionary perspective. You've got an organism (inmate) in an extremely harsh environment (prison). Conditions are such that the organism's survival is in question on a daily basis (threat from other inmates, guards, etc.), and that survival is ensured by being proactively or preemptively violent, or by doing things that boost one's "street cred" (granted, this is a simplified picture, but i think it's accurate enough for the purposes of this rant). From this perspective, violent and noncompliant behaviors are adaptive rather than maladaptive. The original assumption now sounds a bit like throwing a person into a lion's den and expecting them to hug the lion, doesn't it? Makes just about as much sense, too.
Once again, i can but shake my head at the unbelievable assumptions we academics make on a daily basis.
posted by Circus at 1:21 PM
3 Comments:
dude, where's the stupid stuff for the stupid people. you use too many WORDS.
Cut back on the WORDS and maybe I'll read it.
guess who this is. It's someone who can't read all the WORDSSSSSSSSSS.
M, you goof! Words is where it's AT, yo!
I think you are just about at your lifetime quota for word usage.
you need to be more sparing.
i think you've got like, 12 left.
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