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38 Fed. Probation 33 (1974)
The Failure of a Token Economy

handle is hein.journals/fedpro38 and id is 195 raw text is: THE FAILURE OF A TOKEN ECONOMY bation officer, to provide enrichment opportunities for those who prove through preassessment and pretraining that the activities may be bypassed. Individualism Probation officers think of themselves as highly independent, antiauthoritarian, antiorganization individuals. Administrative staff members should not undermine this myth, but it is not necessary that they believe it. The fact is that probation officers as a group are surprisingly tolerant of organization constraints and administrative mickey mouse. There is, however, one precon- dition: They must be given a rationale that they can accept for any policy or procedure. Probation officers will accept, or at least live with anything within reason if it is discussed with them and they have a chance to react. If the large majority of probation officers cannot be persuaded that a given policy is justified, one of three things is wrong: (1) The policy is misguided; (2) they have not properly thought through the policy and the reasons for it and therefore cannot articulate them clearly and forcibly, or (3) the probation of- ficers are resisting you and your administration, not the policy. What probation administration communicates to probation officers is not unrelated to what we as probation officers communicate to the clients we service. It is appalling that so little that is not misconception is known about the probation offi- cer and the probation department after so many years. Perhaps it is a reflection of how little the probation department knows about itself. The general topic is worth a great deal more thought. The Failure of a Token Economy BY D. RICHARD LAWS, PH.D.* Staff Psychologist, A tascadero State Hospital, A tascadero, California HOSE who have established and operated token economies,' particularly in public fa- cilities in the absence of outside support, know that there is massive institutional resistance to these programs. In a State mental hospital, token economies are highly disruptive of estab- lished routines, and their successful operation in- evitably results in more work for the staff. If the token program strives for or achieves a measure of autonomy in the system, particularly in the sense of evaluation and treatment, this is often interpreted as a direct usurpation of traditional (primarily psychiatric) prerogatives. Token economies have, however, proved useful in a variety of settings2 and this obvious viability can no longer be wished away. So if the token economy is not welcomed, it may be tolerated. If it is not seen as an acceptable treatment modality * The opinions or conclusions stated in this article are those of the author and are not to be construed as official or as necessarily reflecting the policy of the Department of Health of the State of California. The author wishes to thank A. J. Rucci, M.D., medical director, Atascadero State Hospital, for his helpful comments and criticisms in the preparation of this paper. Reprints may be obtained from D. R. Laws, Atascadero State Hospital, Atascadero, Cali- fornia 93422. for the acute, tractable individual, it may be viewed as a means of controlling the intractable individual who demonstrates a behavior prob- lem. Once accepted, the token economy will prob- ably be physically isolated and placed under such rigid external administrative control that, if it achieves any measure of success in terms of its objectives, it will be in spite of rather than be- cause of the environment in which it functions. Writing of the difficulty in attempting to estab- lish behavioral programs in restrictive social set- tings, Serber has observed Many hospitals, or programs, not under direct social pressure to change, neither require nor desire innova- tions or objective alternatives to the ways in which they have always operated .... An objective systematic as- sessable program is a threat to a hospital fostering non- objective programs dictated by whim .... 3 This article will describe some of the difficulties encountered in the attempt to establish and oper- ate a token economy in a maximum-security psy- chiatric hospital. This system did not fail in its I In a therapeutic setting a token economy is a system which pro- vides rewards for adaptive behavior. 2 See review by A. E. Kazdin and R. R. Bootzin: The Token Econ- omy: An Evaluative Review, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1972, 5, pp. 343-372. 3 M. Serber, A Word of Warning to Behavior Modifiers Working in a Restrictive Social Setting, Behavior Therapy, 1972, 3, pp. 517-519.

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