A03

• ethical issues

  • offenders are not always given the option to whether they want to participate in a token economy
  • withdrawal of rewards or basic human essentials could also be seen to be ethically questionable
  • may lead to reactions of anger or increased violence/competition within a prison system
• individual differences

  • field found some young prisoners responded more positively to rewards when they were more immediate and frequent
  • however tailoring programmes on an individual basis would be difficult to implement due to staffing issues in prisons and underfunding
  • thus individual differences means the effectiveness is not consistant
• strength- research support

  • cohen and filipczak found after 2 years, token economy groups were less likely to reoffend that control groups
  • however after 3 years rates of recidivism went back to reflecting national statistics- no longer rewards for desireable behaviour in the outside world
  • only temporarily effective, managing behaviour but not treating or changing it long term, not protecting the public from future criminal behaviours