Dennis Schindlar vacation essay

11/26/11 Mr. Demarco

Many people are concerned with the seeming inability of the prison system to rehabilitate criminals. In other words, Prisons do not do enough to shape each inmates behavior so they do not revert back to their criminal ways. In order to solve this problem psychologically speaking, prisons can institute classical conditioning along with positive and negative reinforcement in their rehabilitation programs to shape each criminals behavior. Classical conditioning involves creating connections. It can be used to create reaction stimulus that are unconditioned naturally to shape one s behavior. For example, when students in a high school hear the bell, they are conditioned to realize that their current class has ended and they have two or three minutes to get to their next one. Classical conditioning proved to be successful through Pavlov s experiment. In this experiment, scientist Ivan Pavlov successfully made the connection from a conditioned stimulus (a bell) and a unconditioned response (food) to create a conditioned response that when the bell sounds, the dogs will salivate, bark, etc. This method could be very helpful in maintaining organization in the prison system. Another method that can be used to rehabilitate prisoners is positive and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is when you give something to someone as a reward for doing something right and negative reinforcement is to take away something unpleasant as a reward. In order to properly reward a prisoner(s),a good idea would be to use the Premack Principle to find out what an inmate likes or dislikes. After this, you can begin this reward system known as operative conditioning. Operative conditioning as well as positive and negative reinforcement was proven to be successful by B.F. Skinner. He was a behaviorist that was able to teach a pigeon how to play the piano by rewarding him with food whenever he touched a key on the piano. In a prison environment, Positive

reinforcement can be used by prison guards to give more out-of-cell recess in exchange for good behavior and negative reinforcement can be used by prison guards to take away things like guards and just have cameras watch over them. But, in a case like this, the prison guards will have to realize that the prisoners may act up when they do not think they are being watched, according to the Hawthorne Effect. In effect, the prison rehabilitation program along with the prison environment itself could be changed to better the shaping of each prisoner s behavior. It lacks a form of motivation for prisoners to good as well as be organized so they can permanently shape their behaviors. With the uses of Classical conditioning as well as positive and negative reinforcement, the rehabilitation programs in every prison could become more successful if these methods are done properly.