From punishment to rewards? Treatment dilemmas at a youth detention home

Abstract

The present article analyses staff members’ discourses on the treatment method token economy, as it is implemented at a detention home for young men. The study draws on interviews with eight staff members and on participant observations at the detention home. Using discursive psychology, the analysis centers on the staff members’ own constructions of token economy as well as paradoxes and dilemmas that appear in their talk. Two paradoxes were found: (1) paradox of transparency and interpretation; token economy is objective and transparent, but requires interpretative work over time; and (2) paradox of rewards and punishments; tokens are rewards, but they can be ‘zeroed’ or withdrawn in order to limit undesirable behavior. Further, the analysis showed that both paradoxes invoke a principal ideological dilemma of control – freedom, which staff members attempt to resolve by positioning the young men as responsible for their own actions and themselves as subordinate parties in the outcome of ‘objective’ token economy practices.

Keywords

behavior modification discipline ideological dilemmas juvenile delinquents residential treatment for youth responsibilization

Introduction

Present day penology has been described as being characterized by incoherence and high volatility (see Garland, 1996; O’Malley, 1999; Rose, 1999, 2000). One major dilemma is that between control and a disciplinary mode of power (which produces docile bodies: compliant subjects, through surveillance and calculated distribution of bodies, as described by Foucault, 1977), and, what Rose (1999, 2000) calls, the new ‘advanced’ liberal rationalities which involves an emphasis on active and responsibilized individuals, who are involved in their own rehabilitation through self-governing (Garland, 1997; Hannah-Moffat, 2001; Rose, 2000). The goal of social control organizations within this rationality is to produce not only compliant subjects, but enterprising subjects who willingly engage in introspection and self-monitoring (Garland, 1997; Rose, 2000).

This is for instance seen in young-offender facilities. In a study of the local culture of punishment at one such facility in Canada, Gray and Salole (2006) found that neo-conservative practices (including discipline and punishment with the goal being an individual who willingly complies to what is expected) and neo-liberal practices (including an enterprise ideal, in which residents are to be active in their own rehabilitation) coexisted at the facility. The authors conclude that at local levels, ‘there are “partial approaches” where different models combine and intertwine, resulting in a unique model of penalty’ (Gray and Salole, 2006: 678). Inderbitzin (2007a) has highlighted the conflicting roles and responsibilities of staff members at a juvenile maximum-security facility for violent offenders, following a combination of a rehabilitative rhetoric of juvenile justice and a somewhat punitive reality in the institution. In practice, the staff members struggled to balance the uncomplementary roles arising from the dual responsibilities of providing both treatment and custody.

Further, the dilemma of producing free and responsible individuals in a forced environment, has been highlighted by Cox (2011). It has been argued that the movement to neo-liberalist governing within correctional institutions may be seen, for example, in programs of transformation involving psychological techniques and focusing on ‘the relations that humans have with themselves’ (Rose, 2000: 334). Here, clients are handled as responsible and rational individuals and encouraged toward self-government (see Cox, 2011). One example is the popularity of cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) in prisons and juvenile institutions. However, in her study of youth going through behavioral change programs in secure residential facilities in the USA, Cox (2011) argues that young offenders in confinement will never fully be able to exercise the will and agency that CBT programs aim for. The program promises to liberate the youth through their own responsibility taking, but simultaneously encourages their submission to authority and provides few opportunities for them to express the self-control they are urged to exercise.

In the present study, such dilemmas are explored in a youth detention home by examining the local treatment culture, as it is talked into being by staff members while discussing implementation of the treatment method token economy (TE).

Discipline and responsibilization – the case of token economy

Token economy is a behavioral reinforcement system in which tokens are allotted on the basis of clients’ adherence to specific rules of comportment (Spiegler and Guevermont, 2003). Token systems have a long history as treatment and motivational tools in rehabilitative and educational settings, as well as in psychiatric institutions (Kazdin, 1978, 1982), and in prison settings (e.g. Liebling, 2008). Presently, behavioral reinforcement programs are common in residential treatment of ‘disruptive’ youth, in many, if not most, residential programs in the USA and also in Sweden (Schwab, 2008: 17). Reinforcement programs may have different formats, like the Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS) system (Sprague et al., 2013), a system that is rapidly being implemented from schools to institutions. A recent research review found rather few studies, and of varying quality, that indicated modest effects of token economy in youth institutions (James et al., 2013).

Few studies of token economy or similar programs have been conducted from a qualitative framework. Though sparse, these have shown that despite the programs’ apparent simplicity (i.e. positive behavior: positive reinforcement), in practice, they are much less straight-forward when it comes to managing conflicts and enforcing rules (e.g. Buckholdt and Gubrium, 1979; Kivett and Warren, 2002; Liebling, 2000). This might be due to the necessarily subjective element of interpreting both the guidelines and the behavior of the clients (Buckholdt and Gubrium, 1979; Kivett and Warren, 2002). For example, in work on motivational systems in prison, Liebling (2000) points out that the translation of rules into action is always an interpretative matter. Staff members were found to enforce the rules selectively, which was crucial for ‘the smooth flow of the prison’ as well as for staff–inmate relationships (Liebling, 2000: 344).

In a study of governmental power, token economy is interesting since it may be understood as embodying modes of both disciplinary control and of the new ‘advanced’ liberal rationalities. For instance, in their study of a group home for delinquent boys, Kivett and Warren (2002) argue that such behavior modification systems epitomize a totalizing institutional gaze, controlling bodies in time and space. Crewe (2007), however, found that a similar system (Incentives and Earned Privileges program; a behavioral rehabilitative program aimed at altering prisoner behavior through the use of rewards) implemented in the UK prison system also works by responsibilizing prisoners, inviting them to become entrepreneurs of their own rehabilitation. Here prisoners are encouraged to take responsibility for their own actions and their rehabilitation by ‘inciting and stimulating’ rather than constraining and suppressing (Crewe, 2007: 258). The system encourages inmates to engage in self-regulations ‘in a way that feels freely chosen even when highly structured’ and is part of the movement of responsibility from the institution to the individual (Crewe, 2007: 258).

The present study specifically focuses on paradoxes and ideological dilemmas that emerge in the staff members’ talk about token economy rules, and how these are handled. The analyses draw on discursive psychology (DP; Billig, 1997; Potter, 1996; Potter and Wetherell, 1987), and positioning theory (Davies and Harré, 1990; Wetherell, 1998).

Discursive psychology, ideological dilemmas and subject positions

DP investigates psychological issues from the participants’ own perspectives and as situated within specific social practices. Instead of understanding psychological phenomena as inner processes, existing beyond language and hidden inside people’s minds, DP argues that these phenomena are constituted through social and discursive interaction and thus directs the attention to participants’ use of language in interaction (Billig, 1997).

From this perspective, the concept of ideological dilemmas is useful in understanding the incoherency of contemporary penal policy and especially, practice. The concept of ideological dilemmas was first introduced by Billig et al. (1988), as a perspective on ideology and thinking, problematizing the notion of ideology as a coherent, unified system of thought, as well as the tendency to understand social actors as passive recipients of ideology of belief systems. Instead, here, ideology is not understood as separated from social interaction among people, and may rather be conceptualized as ‘the common-sense of the society’ (Billig, 1997: 48); it is what makes certain habits or beliefs appear as natural and others as unnatural. Common sense intertwined reasoning necessarily consists of contrary themes, and it is that which allows thinking to happen in the first place, since thinking is a dialectic process (Billig, 1997). The themes may not be explicit in people’s talk but are discoverable through analysis. Unless a choice has to be made, conflicting themes of ideologies do not necessarily lead to a full-scale ideological dilemma (Billig et al., 1988).

Further, from a DP perspective, social identity is crucial and can be studied through positioning theory (Davies and Harré, 1990). This is useful in a study of liberal rationalities of governing, where governmental power is understood as not ‘“objectifying” but rather “subjectifying”’ (Garland, 1997: 175), and involving the shaping of subjectivities which align with governmental aims, using freedom as a resource (Rose, 2000). Positioning theory may be seen to offer novel ways to analyze subjectivity in interaction: ‘a subject position is a possibility in known forms of talk; position is what is created in and through talk as the speakers and hearers take themselves up as persons’ (Davies and Harré, 1990: 62). An analysis of positioning thus highlights the importance of social interaction for identity work, and that it is in language that people construct themselves in certain ways, are constructed by others and negotiate these subject positions (Phoenix et al., 2003). Further, the concept of subject positioning connects wider discourses or ideologies with local constructions of identities in interaction, and implies that people are both products of as well as producers of discourse (Edley, 2001).

In this study we will extend the prior research on local treatment cultures by building on the theoretical framework of disciplinary control (Foucault, 1977) and advanced liberal rationalities (Rose, 1999, 2000) and examining a specific and commonly used treatment method, token economy, in detail. Drawing on discursive psychology and grounding our analysis in the staff members’ own talk, we will study how participants themselves take up and negotiate wider ideologies, position themselves and others, and document paradoxes and dilemmas that emerge in their talk.

The study

Setting

The data analyzed in the present article are part of a larger ethnographic study at Stillbrook,¹ a youth detention home (Sw: särskilt ungdomshem) in Sweden; a type of residential institution where young persons might be placed through court orders or municipal decisions because of troublesome behavior (e.g. drug abuse or criminality) or difficult home conditions (all of the residents at this specific home had been engaged in some kind of criminal or violent activity). Stillbrook admits young men between the ages of 13 and 16 years. It accommodates up to eight residents and has eight full-time staff members who work as treatment assistants² (behandlingsassistenter). At the detention home, the youth are to receive housing, schooling, and treatment.

Stillbrook was chosen as a research site for several reasons, one being that it is an institution that combines control and rehabilitation in that it administers forced treatment. The home is not surrounded by high walls or barbed wire, but rather, quite the opposite: it consists of a group of small cottages situated in stunningly beautiful nature, where for most of the day, the doors to the main cottage and individual rooms remain unlocked. However, the residents are not permitted to leave the premises except for occasional weekend leave to visit parents/guardians or shopping trips with the staff. Most daily activities for the residents take place at the cottage area where they eat, sleep, and go to school. Stillbrook features a number of treatment programs, including token economy and Aggression Replacement Training (ART; Goldstein et al., 1998), which, at the time of the fieldwork, had been implemented at the home for four years. Whereas only part of the staff group had been educated in, and participated in the implementation of, ART, all staff members were involved in the development of the TE system and the practice of TE at the unit. Many of the staff members talked about TE as being the single most prominent influence on their daily work since the unit adopted this new treatment model.

Interviews, observations, and analysis

The study includes semi-structured interviews with young men (11 interviews) and staff (14 interviews),³ and participant observations (as well as videotaping interaction; for an example see Franzén and Aronsson, 2013) spread out over a period of two years and adding up to about 15 weeks of observation. This article draws on individual interviews with the eight full-time staff members as well as the participant observations at the detention home (all by first author). The participant observations focused on everyday interactions between residents and staff; the first author would participate in most daily activities such as meals or in the gym, but mostly by ‘hanging out’ in the home, listening to and participating in conversations with both staff members and residents. Fieldnotes were taken during the observations and then transcribed at the end of the visit to the detention home.⁴

The interviews were conducted using an interview guide with themes and questions. The questions covered themes such as working with different treatment models, using structured rules in conflict situations, and the staff’s professional roles as treatment assistants. All interviews were videotaped and transcribed in Swedish. The extracts cited in this article were translated by the first author and corrected by a native speaker. The translation process was guided by an intention of retaining the original wordings without compromising meaning. In line with discursive psychology and its focus on dialogical action, both staff members’ and the interviewer’s contributions have been included in the extracts.

The analysis involved a close reading and rereading of the interview transcriptions and identification of recurring patterns of: (1) institutional discourses which were drawn upon by staff members; and (2) how staff members positioned themselves and the young men in relation to these. The analysis also focused on the emerging ideological dilemmas and staff members’ management of them. The study has received ethical approval from the regional ethical committee (EPN 53–08).

Token economy at Stillbrook

The token economy practiced at Stillbrook encompasses all 24 hours of the day and virtually all of the activities that the young men engage in. It is based on a timetable, and a set of rules and objectives, compiled and documented by the treatment assistants. The rules specify when, where, and to some extent how, activities are supposed to be carried out by the residents. The day is divided into eight modules, and within each module, it is specified what the residents are expected to accomplish (e.g. ‘make your bed’, ‘brush your teeth’), how they are to behave (e.g. to show good table manners, not to swear or make threats), and where and when they are to locate themselves (‘be in your room at 10 o’clock’). To some extent the rules also encompass body posture (e.g. ‘sit properly on the couch’); however, these rules are more rarely enforced. If the residents follow the rules, they can earn a pre-determined number of points per module and day. The staff calls this ‘fulfilling the module’ (Sw: uppfylla modulen). Every resident is required to carry a personal ‘module card’ at all times, on which the staff members note how many points he has earned during each module.

The amount of points the residents have on their cards determines in which activities they may participate (e.g. play video games), whether they are allowed to leave the unit, and how much pocket money they receive at the end of the week. In theory, the residents can only earn points, they do not receive fines. But they can lose the opportunity to earn points on a given day, and they can lose all points that they have earned. As we will see, this is problematic for the staff, who do not wish to talk about any losses or punishment.

Paradoxes and ideological dilemmas

When staff members talk about the use of token economy, two paradoxes can be found: (1) paradox of transparency and interpretation – TE must be understood as objective and transparent, while at the same time it is in need of interpretative work; and (2) paradox of rewards and punishments – implying that tokens must be understood as rewards, not punishment, while at the same time they can be withdrawn. Both these paradoxes invoke an underlying ideological dilemma of control – freedom. The goal, within the local treatment culture, is for the young men to enact ‘normal’ behaviors but to do this from their own free will. The residents have to be controlled/steered toward these behaviors while at the same time the goal is for them to choose the (right) direction themselves. The staff members attempt to resolve the dilemma by positioning the residents as responsible for their own actions and themselves as not having a part in the outcome of the TE practice.

Paradox of transparency and interpretation

The staff members argue that token economy is a transparent system with objective rules and that it therefore is fair and equal to the young men. They recurrently present TE through a kind of clean slate metaphor: all residents start the day with zero points and then work their way up to the maximum number of points over the day. Desired behavior is specified in the TE-document and if the residents exhibit the desired behavior they receive the specified number of points. Through this metaphor, transparency and fairness are foregrounded: the same rules apply to all residents, and they know what the rules are and how many points they will get if they follow them. This also implies a ‘freedom of choice’ and focus on individualized responsibility (see Rose, 1999 on responsibilization); it is a resident’s own choice whether to follow the rules or not, and it is his own responsibility. The following extract concerns the transparency of the system as well as the construction of rules as objective.

Extract 1: Nilla

… so token economy is convenient’ cause, they know the rules, they can read up on them and they know what goes, you just have to say ‘that’s the way it is’, you just have a look … previously you had to have different methods (inaudible) today, it was like ‘today you haven’t behaved, today you can’t do that’, now they can see that they haven’t behaved when they think they have behaved then, you can show them in another way.

Nilla begins by stating that TE is convenient (Sw: smidigt) because the residents know the rules, since the rules are written down and can be read by the residents, as well as physically pointed to by the staff ‘you just have a look’. Once written down, the rules appear as objective and stable entities, which enable staff members to talk about rules as if they, themselves, had had no part in the creation or interpretation of those rules. In this way, the TE-document works as an externalizing device (Potter, 1996); it can be used in conversation to construct a kind of ‘out-there-ness’, which makes the rules seem more objective. The objectivity and stability of the written rules allows for the residents to see for themselves if they have not ‘been good’, and for the staff to ‘show it in a different way’ by pointing to the document. Furthermore, staff members are distanced from any interpretation of the underlying intentions behind the behavior. They position (Davies and Harré, 1990) themselves as the impersonal readers of rules, not disciplinarians. The residents are free to choose whether to behave in line with the written rules or not and are thus positioned as having the sole responsibility for the outcome.

When comparing ART (Aggression Replacement Training) and TE, one staff member, Lennart, comments in a laudatory way on the transparency of TE.

Extract 2: Lennart

But you know token economy is a … it’s more straightforward, you know because, if you’ve handled it well, it’s okay, if you’ve handled it badly you can see it immediately in the points.

Lennart is implying a direct correlation between the young men’s behaviors and the points they receive. The behaviors are graded, as it were, as the residents receive a certain amount of points depending on how well they are judged to have followed the rules. Lennart states, ‘you can see it in the points right away’ – as the points are written down on the residents’ personal module cards they are handled as ‘objective’ representations of their behavior. By converting behavior into numbers in the TE system, the behaviors can be talked about, examined, and ranked.

While staff members mostly present TE as an objective, rational, and transparent system, a second, and opposing, construction of TE is also present in staff talk. In this contrasting version, TE is construed as subjective and in need of interpretation. For example, staff member Åke, when talking about some students who have made a system out of going to different staff members, asking the same question and hoping to eventually get the desired answer, said: ‘then it’s, you know, rules, it’s damn difficult with rules (small laugh)’. Åke continued by using sport as an example of another context where rules may be interpreted in different ways by different referees, and thereby highlighting interpretation as an unavoidable aspect of rules (rather than pointing to that this would be a problem particular to Stillbrook).

Token economy is further talked about as something which has taken time to learn and which needs to be ‘worked on’ continuously by the staff group, for example, in staff meetings. This is exemplified when Lotta responds to how work has changed since they adopted ART and TE.

Extract 3: Lotta

Eh, and then when we started with token economy they get, they start the day with zero, eh, and then they build them up all day, and it is a monitoring device in my – I think it’s a lot better now, eh … at first it was really difficult, because we didn’t all work the same way. [AGF: among staff members?] No we didn’t, eh, some could overlook feet on the table … eh, some could overlook well, whatever, that, that was written that you shouldn’t do, you know common eh like ‘shut up’ or eh, threats and all that, and it’s written clearly very, clearly … but it, it’s taken time before, now, now we’re a tight group, we’re, we do very much the same now, we didn’t at first.

Lotta begins by drawing on the clean slate metaphor when she argues that the young men choose their own fate, but she continues by accounting for the difficulties that the staff group has had while implementing TE. The problem is defined as ‘we didn’t all work in the same way’, implying that the rules are not clear-cut, but subjective, and that interpretation is needed. It is not just a matter of ‘reading up on [the rules]’ as Nilla argued in extract 1. Lotta exemplifies this with rules that were interpreted differently by different staff members even though they are stated ‘clearly’. Even though the rules are clear it has taken time for the staff to become a ‘tight group’ that interprets and enforces the rules in a consistent way.

The matter of transparency, however, was always an issue at Stillbrook; staff members would talk about the importance of continuously working on and updating the system. During the fieldwork the system was updated several times. A kind of inflation of the rules took place, where the staff members would add new rules as they were needed, rules that would specify more exactly what counted as misbehaviors. At a point, however, the rules would be too many for the staff members themselves to remember, and at that point they would update the system and decrease rules or increase manageability for both staff members and residents. This may be seen to exemplify the paradox of transparency and interpretation. On the one hand the staff members strive for transparency; everyone should know which rules apply and how to enforce them. Subjective interpretation should be minimized for this matter. On the other hand social life was too complex to be specified and written down in the form of behavioral rules.

Paradox of rewards and punishments

On the official website of the National Board of Institutional Care, the ideal enforcement of TE is described as reward-based:

Token Economy is used to motivate and reinforce desirable actions or behaviors. Systematically attending to and rewarding desired behaviors increases these behaviors. Concurrently, problematic behaviors are decreased, as these are opposing behaviors [Sw: motsatsbeteenden] to the desirable ones focused on in Token Economy. (Teckenekonomi inom SiS, 2011, our translation)

Punishments and rewards can be construed as dichotomous. At Stillbrook, the staff members themselves mainly talk about token economy in terms of rewards, motivation and helping the young men. It is construed as a contrast to interventions that involve punishment. Billig (1991) points out that arguments always are constructed to undermine alternative versions. At Stillbrook, the residents’ own version constitutes such an alterative or contrasting version, as they recurrently talk about TE as being used by the staff for threats or sanctions. In contrast, the staff members often talk about the importance of not using TE in a punitive manner.

In the following extract, Britta responds to a question about what it is like for her to work with ART and TE, as she had been talking about difficulties that she had in the beginning.

Extract 4: Britta

Yeah it was probably learning to see token economy as a reward system and not, a punishment system, to, to make it stick, that eh … you get good, good ehh consequences by, if you like, following the rules, and instead of thinking that ‘I’m the adult who punishes all the time if you don’t behave’, I think that it’s about that, learning to see it as a reward system, you start at zero points in the morning when you get up, and then you have the possibility of earning your, 16 or 20 points, during the day, and that you do by … good and eh, behavior and following rules in a good way, to– to make that way of thinking stick, I think … because in the beginning I probably saw it more as a punishment system, I probably did, in the beginning.

Britta implicitly invokes the paradox of rewards and punishments when she explains that the difficulty was learning to think of TE as a ‘reward system’ as opposed to a ‘punishment system’. Implicitly, she acknowledges that TE could be seen as punishment, but emphasizes that it is a matter of learning the right way of understanding TE. In the correct way of thinking, the staff members are positioned as non-punitive. Thus the residents may be positioned as the ‘owners’ of the problem as they ‘have to learn’ to see token economy as a reward system. It may take a long time to acquire this way of seeing, but it has to be learnt.

By talking about learning, she can also be seen to invoke the paradox of transparency and interpretation. All participants may not have access to the same way of interpreting the rules, but this is partly a matter of insufficient learning. Token economy is not always transparent. It has to be learnt, and you have to learn how to see it as a reward system. In this way, the focus is still primarily on the residents’ behavior, following rules leads to the right consequences. The paradox of transparency and interpretation is thus invoked in that the focus is not on different staff members’ interpretations and judgments of the residents’ behavior, but on the residents’ own willingness to learn or not.

Problems primarily arise if the residents think about the system as punishment, as they sometimes understand the staff’s use of the system as one of bribing or threatening them. Below, Nilla exemplifies how a situation could be misunderstood by the residents.

Extract 5: Nilla

The kids can see it as if … we bribe them, threaten them with taking points away and that but … that’s not how it really is, but they can express that sometimes, you know, but it’s not as if we take away points because it’s they who don’t get points … they don’t fulfill … what is supposed to be fulfilled, but it can get a little … because they can, they take it the wrong way sometimes, you know.

Nilla explains the young men’s misunderstanding as an aspect of them not having understood who is responsible for the possible ‘point gain’. The residents are not punished if they do not receive a point, they can only gain points. It is therefore the residents themselves who just have not earned their points ‘they don’t fulfill what is supposed to be fulfilled’. Here she is referring to the local term ‘fulfilling the module’ which emphasizes the residents’ behavior and the objective TE-document. The ‘right’ interpretation is that they have not fulfilled what the document specifies; it is not the case that the staff take points away from them.

Within such a view of the evaluation process, staff members are notably absent as persons, rather it is depicted as a truly objective process, which is only up to the residents. The residents are thus positioned as persons who fail to understand their own responsibility. The residents have not, as yet, acquired ‘the right kind of thinking’ about TE.

The staff group primarily construes TE as a system built on ideals of objectivity, fairness, and rewards rather than sanctions, but simultaneously, in practice, rules and behaviors are interpreted and tokens can be withdrawn. In everyday speech at the detention home, this is referred to as a resident being ‘zeroed’ (Sw: nollad) but many staff members express concerns about this term and the use of it, as they argue it has a ‘punishing feel to it’. Within the local implementation of the TE system, there are thus circumstances where already earned points can be withdrawn (residents ‘are zeroed’) and this sometimes becomes dilemmatic when TE simultaneously is presented as a reward system. One strategy that the staff members use to handle this is by talking about consequences and by referring to the transparency aspect.

This can be seen below, where a staff member discusses a situation that occurred the previous evening. A resident was caught having smuggled a cell phone into the detention home, cell phones are not allowed, and the phone was found to be stolen. The young man was faced with ‘not receiving any points that day’, and the interviewer asks Mona about her thoughts on reward/punishment in this particular context.

Extract 6: Mona

In actuality he had received points for the main part of the day, which he had to give up, at the same time, they are pretty, eh what should I say, they are pretty well aware that this type of thing is costly, if you get caught, eh it had been the same thing if he had … had cigarettes or a lighter or, so they know pretty well, what’s okay, and really, there has to be … I do very much believe that there should be a consequence for your actions, a quick one, not in a week or two.

Mona starts by confirming that the points that the young man had ‘actually’ earned that day had to be withdrawn. This could be understood as a form of punishment for breaking the rules and as a problematic deviation from the ideal ‘reward discourse’. But she then partly resolves this problem by drawing on the TE as an objective and transparent model. The rules are objective, and the residents know the rules because the system is transparent ‘they are pretty well aware that this type of thing is costly’. Thus the residents are accountable for their own actions and they have to endure the consequences of their actions. It is the resident, not the staff (or the TE system) who ‘owns’ the problem, and the negative consequences constitute an impersonal deprivation of rewards, rather than punishment. Her reasoning thus invokes both the paradox of transparency and interpretation and that of rewards and punishments.

Staff members’ own reflections on dilemmas: Managing paradoxes and dilemmas

Some of the staff members themselves partly identified key elements of the dilemmas of TE as a lived practice: (1) different staff members might arrive at different interpretations; and (2) taking away points might be understood as punishment by the residents. The dilemmas are part of their everyday life at Stillbrook and something that continuously has to be negotiated and managed.

A core idea of discursive psychology is that ‘talk is action’ (Edwards, 1997). In line with such ideas, ideological dilemmas are to a great extent rhetorical affairs. The following extract concerns the paradox of rewards and punishments and the matter of using the proper rhetoric. Per has been asked to talk about what it is like to work with TE.

Extract 7: Per

Yea, it has its pros and cons, eh, it, I think it’s very … well functioning, absolutely, eh, it’s really a method that you can use, on the other hand it can become, sometimes a punishment almost rather than– than a, reward system, unfortunately, that ‘there you lost a point’, you put it kind of wrong sometimes you, take points instead of them earning them, eh, where ‘today you get zeroed because you’ve done this’, eh, so the strange– or the thing that’s wrong with it is that it can become like a punishment system, and from the guys’ perspective it does become a punishment system.

Per invokes the dilemma of control as he talks about the problem stemming from how the staff members ‘put it’ when they talk to the residents. When staff members say that they ‘take away points’ or that residents are ‘zeroed’ (Sw: nollad) rather than talk about the residents as ‘earning points’, they miss the core idea of the system. It is through talking about the system in this way that it can ‘become’ a punishment system. Per emphasizes the importance of choosing the right words when talking about TE in order to construct it as a reward-system.

This rhetorical aspect was also stressed by, for example, Mona, when discussing the implementation of TE and that both staff members and residents were protesting against the system at first. She believed that the reason for protest was that it is a ‘point system, and it, it really depends on how you choose to use it, how you talk about it’. She continued by discussing the use of the term ‘zeroed’, and drawing on the clean slate metaphor: ‘you know, I, (inaudible) don’t like this thing with “zeroed”, but, on the other hand if you turn it around, that you wake up every day, without any points … rather that you work your way up to 20 points, then it becomes something completely different’.

A second aspect of this is that it is not only crucial how staff members talk about TE, the staff also have to do work on their thoughts (and feelings) about the system. In Britta’s account, she explains how the thoughts are connected to the way the staff members speak about TE. The staff have a choice between talking about a resident not earning points or loosing points. Staff members usually talk of residents ‘getting a fulfilled module’ or ‘not getting a fulfilled module’ (as also seen in extract 5). If a staff member chooses to say ‘there you lost [points]’, this is indicative of ‘punitive mindset’.

Extract 8: Britta

But it’s about the staff members’ way of thinking, just in how you say it that eh … if we say there is a situation, ehh, where a student won’t get a fulfilled module, that you choose to say ‘now your behavior led to you not earning the points here, getting a fulfilled module’ instead of choosing to say ‘now you lost points’, because there you have, you know, it becomes, to me it becomes a huge difference, because then, if you say ‘there you lost’ or ‘there went a point’ that’s punitive thinking.

Learning to think about TE in this particular way, as rewarding rather than punishing, is something which takes a lot of work and needs to be constantly worked on, at times it is described as an inner conflict. This was also discussed by Britta in the same interview (extract 4), and hinted at by Per (extract 7). It is not just the residents who have to learn to think about TE the right way, it is also the staff members themselves.

As another staff member, Lotta, said, TE can be understood as a monitoring device (Sw: styrmedel), which can be used to steer the residents into desired conduct. In the local treatment culture, however, the hegemonic ideology is one of ‘freedom’; of care in the form of support and close, trusting relationships in the hope that the residents themselves will realize and choose normality. It therefore becomes important to understand TE as a positive, rewarding kind of motivation which is not forcing the residents and also that the residents understand that it is their own free will to follow it and that they are in control over the outcomes. It also becomes crucial for the staff to position the residents as responsible for their own actions.

Concluding discussion

Previous research suggests that institutions such as detention homes, which provide forced care, are characterized by conflicting ideologies (Cox, 2011; Gray and Salole, 2006; Inderbitzin, 2007a, 2007b). Like Gray and Salole (2006), we argue that unique models of punishment are constructed at local levels, where different models of punishment combine and intertwine. Thus, wider ideologies may be studied locally where they are being (re)produced and put into practice. Consequently, this also highlights that the staff members’ constructions of TE must be understood in relation to these ideologies. In this study we have used discursive psychology to examine how wider ideologies are taken up and negotiated by staff members themselves in their talk about token economy at a detention home for young men in Sweden. Two paradoxes were identified: a paradox of transparency and interpretation, and a paradox of rewards and punishments.

Both paradoxes provided rhetorical resources, and were recurrently drawn upon in the staff members’ talk on token economy: (1) ‘the clean slate metaphor’ was used as a resource which foregrounded transparency and fairness of the TE system and how the tokens were to be understood as rewards rather than punishments. As such, the metaphor illustrates a transparent and fair system that motivates rather than coerces good behavior; (2) the use of rules and numbers as externalizing devices (Potter, 1996) which construct TE as objective and transparent. Once the rules are written down in the TE-document, they appear as objective, stable entities, separated from the individual staff member. In practice, it may reduce discussions about whether a specific behavior should be deemed as good or bad. Specifically, numbers may function as inscription devices, that is, the use of numbers make things appear stable, durable, and comparable (Latour, 1986; Rose, 1999). At Stillbrook, numbers were important elements in the production of ‘objective’ rewards and consequences, which allowed staff to talk about the residents’ behavior, to compare, and project progress or stagnancy (see Rose, 1999). In this way, the numbers produce objectivity, and are used effectively for rhetorical purposes (Rose, 1999).

As Billig et al. (1988) argue, ideology necessarily consists of contrary themes, and the theory of ideological dilemmas emphazises the interconnectedness between formal and common-sensical ideology, and in particular how ideology is reproduced in common discourse. Here, we are arguing that the paradoxes that emerged in the staff members’ talk are the result of a principal ideological dilemma of control-freedom. To begin with, token economy involves a type of total environment, an aspect of disciplining. The goal with this kind of disciplining can be seen as the creation of ‘docile bodies’, subjects that automatically adhere to authority, bodies which can be monitored and perfected (Foucault, 1977). Instrumental to the discipline is an enclosed environment, but also the controlling and placing of the bodies in the physical room, ‘partitioning’ (Foucault, 1977: 143); preventing, for example, that individuals group together and become uncontrollable. The timetable is another important aspect as it breaks down the day into structured units controlling both time and space. Both the aspects of partitioning and use of timetable are found in the practice of TE where the TE-documents specify where the residents are to be found at specific times (i.e. residents are to be at the kitchen table at X o’clock for dinner, residents are not allowed in each other’s rooms). Foucault further points out three processes involved in discipline: (1) hierarchical surveillance, involving a monitoring gaze from those in power in order to create knowledge about human bodies; (2) normalizing judgment, involving a continuous evaluation of conduct in relation to standards; and (3) examination, which combines the previous two, applying a normalizing gaze, in order to classify and punish (Foucault, 1977). These processes can be seen in the TE system as the staff members have created a standard of conduct for the residents (specified in the TE-document) which they then use for continuous evaluation as well as examination as the residents receive points according to how well they followed the rules of TE. This finding is similar to that of Kivett and Warren (2002), who argued that these types of behavior modification systems embody a totalizing institutional gaze, while at the same time, they show in their study how forbidden behaviors often are ignored despite the aim of totalizing control.

Second, token economy at Stillbrook also relates to the new modes of control which Rose (1999, 2000) calls advanced liberal rationalities, where governing involves the shaping of subjectivities which align with governmental aims, using freedom as a resource. Subjects are encouraged to work on themselves in order to become free rather than in the name of conformity. As opposed to in disciplinary regimes, the goal is personal autonomy rather than abiding to authority. Within correctional institutions the goal has largely become the responsibilized individual, involved in his/her own rehabilitation by self-governing (Garland, 1997; Hannah-Moffat, 2001; Rose, 2000). The desirable subject is one that is enterprising; ‘each person should be obliged to be prudent, responsible for their own destinies, actively calculating their own destinies, actively calculating about their futures and providing for their own security and that of their families’ (Rose, 2000: 324). TE may then be understood as a kind of responsibilization strategy (Garland, 1997; Hannah-Moffat, 2001; Rose, 2000). The staff members strive to use TE as a way of encouraging and guiding the residents toward positive behavior, rather than punishing or forcing them into compliance (see Crewe, 2007). The local treatment ideology at Stillbrook, then, is about making the young men freely choose to assume responsibility and choose to behave ‘normally’, that is, according to TE rules.

The combination of the disciplinary aspects of the detention home, incorporated in the TE practice, and the advanced liberal rationalities thus create, what could be conceptualized as ‘troubled subject positions’ (Wetherell, 1998) for the staff members. The staff members are struggling to position the young men as responsible for their own actions and free to make decisions about their own conduct, and to position themselves as non-authoritarian, ‘good staff members’, who do not force or punish and who are merely impersonal readers of rules. Achieving this includes hard work in learning to understand that the system is about rewards and not punishments, as well as rhetorical ‘work’ to ‘create the objective and rewarding system’.

Footnotes

Funding

This work was supported by the National Board of Institutional Care, Sweden (SIS, grant number 1.2007/0007.3 to Rolf Holmqvist), the Sven Jerring Foundation, and Majblomman.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on how to strengthen this article. We also wish to thank Karin Aronsson and Lucas Gottzén for sharing insights and comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

Anna G Franzén, PhD, is Assistant Professor at the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden. Her research interests include issues concerning neo-liberal rationalities, discourse, power, and subjectivity, as well as talk in interaction and social order, specifically among staff and young men in forced residential treatment and in prison.

Rolf Holmqvist, PhD, is Professor of clinical psychology at Linköping University, Sweden. His main research interests are aspects of treatment processes in psychiatry and youth treatment.

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