Behavior Mod: Euphemism for a Kind of Psychogenocide

The MIPC is a behavior modification program designed to house about 90 troublesome and assaultive inmates. Originally funded by the federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration,  
The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) was a U.S. federal agency within the United States Department of Justice.
 
 
 
 the $1.5 million program is one of the most advanced behavior mod set-ups in the country, or for that matter in the world.
The center for activity and security for the prison is the Control Bubble, a complex series of instrument panels manned by two guards (or specialists to use Marquette terminology) who control heat light, doorways and an intercom system for every cell in the building. Cells stretch out in a four-wing X shape from the bubble, and each wing is named a different color — blue, green, orange, yellow for program purposes.
The program is based on a token economy  
Token, a voucher or gift card redeemable for items of value.
 
 
 
 system where inmates are awarded points for good behavior. In order to be promoted from one level wing to the next, a prisoner must amass anywhere from 2000 to 3000 extra tokens, and to remain on any one level, a weekly rent must be paid in tokens.
Green Wing,  
Green Wing is a British sitcom set in the fictional East Hampton Hospital.
 
 
 
 the lowest level of the MIPC, puts virtually a total clamp on a prisoner’s activity. A prisoner describes it:

 
Once in Green Wing, you’re not allowed anything except the necessities such as clothes, bedlinen, soap, etc. and many times you’re denied these.

Green Wing is simply sensory deprivation to the ultimate degree and it is used for brainwashing and experimentation purposes. It is also a common place for beatings, gassings, and feces in the food.

 
We can’t set those accusations aside, says MIPC superintendent Ronald Gach. But we have been bombarded with investigation upon investigation. Everybody thinks we’re using lobotomies,  
A lobotomy or leucotomy is a form of neurosurgical treatment for psychiatric disorder or neurological disorder that involves severing connections in the brain’s prefrontal cortex.
 
 
 
 Clockwork Orange  
A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962.
 
 
 
 
 
 techniques.

Later that afternoon, a prisoner in the Yellow Wing, the highest level of the program, denied that he’s been changed by behavior modification. The man is in his mid-20’s, and has been in prison since 1970, but has only been in the program for six months.

 
No, he smiles and shrugs.

I don’t think I’m any different.
Are they really using drugs here.

 
Well, I don’t know. I don’t see them foreing it on anybody. I know somebody got kerosene in their food last week. And I know that sometimes I’ll drink some milk here and feel myself start to go numb.
Look, counter Gach, what would you do if you were locked up and wanted to make life miserable for your keepers? Harrass them. Make life miserable fot them. That’s why they are writting the letters and saying those things.

But prison administrators are circumspect in responding to these charges. They prefer to discuss the logistics of their institution.
Dr. James Metzin, the staff psychologist, is a gnarled man who is so tired he has a perpetual flow of tears down his cheeks.

 
We’re not interested in the mysterious little things that take place in these people’s heads says Metzin, Our focus here is on the objectively observable behavior. They can think about killing or raping somebody all they want.

The most serious problem with the program is that no one on the staff really has any background in behavior therapy. One administrator’s definition of behavior modification was

 
It’s whatever you want it to be.

The Marquette program designer Frank Petrock, had the sole expertise in the area, but he has long since lost contact with the prison.
And they’ve got a law suit on their hands.
Gabe Kamowitz of the Michigan Legal Services in Detroit  
Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan.
 
 
 
  is seeking to close the prison down.

 
The whole basis of our attack on the MIPC he says, is that it’s an experimental process. And if we can prove it’s an experiment, they ain’t gonna be able to do it.

The Kamowitz case has national significant because it’s not testing for obvious abuses in the MIPC program, but the concept as a whole as violating condtitutional rights of the prisoners.
It could be the end of behavior modification in prison.
A recent audit of the MIPC confirms what many prople have thought along about maintaining behavior modification programs in prison — it’s extensive , in this case near three times the cost of a normal penitentiary.

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Kathleen Stein. King of Worm Runners

Продолжение К началу

 
When I get through explaining this to you, you’ll know even less than when I started.

Some of the recipients of this first issue took the joke at face value and sent back their experiments – real and farcical – and the WRD was on its way. With the exception of The Journal of Irreproducible Results, McConnell says,

 
The Worm Runner’s Digest is the only scientific journal that knowingly publishes satire.

During its first year the Digest’s format mixed serious articles on physiological psychology with such twisted pieces as Operant Conditioning in the Domestic Darning Needle and During its first year the Digest’s format mixed serious articles on physiological psychology with such twisted pieces as Operant Conditioning in the Domestic Darning Needle and How to Make Use of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Without Hall Trying, or such sublime pictorials as A Child’s Garden of Vectors. Each issue was shot through with cartoons of worms engaged in Socratic dialogue.
McConnell’s editorial, Worms & Things, always let the reader in on the latest theory. How old are worms? he writes in one issue.

 
If a worm be hatched from an egg, grow to maturity in two months, then fission into halves spontaneously and regrow into two mature worms in one month, how old are the latter individuals? And if this keeps up for an extended period of time, what can one say about age?

In later issues straight articles were separated from spoofs because scientists complained they could not tell them apart. The serious and the satirical were printed from opposite covers after that. Yes, there were some works of genius in the Digest, he mused.

 
Some of it’s obviously crud. But to quote Ted Sturgeon and his marvelous law, ‘Ninety percent of everything is crud.’

And the Digest was read by simply everybody in the scientific community.
The August 1963 issue featured A Christmas Caramel, perhaps the only extant proof that famed behaviorist B.F. Skinner had ever cracked a joke. This departure from Skinner’s renowned sober voice – a skit he wrote for a Harvard Christmas party – takes place in the office of one Dr. Skinnybox, who is interrupted from his reading of Esquire magazine by Barrelbottom, a student inquiring about graduate work in psychology. By means of a series of electrical shocks to Barrelbottom’s bottom – followed by rewards of peanuts – Skinnybox convinces Barrelbottom to study behaviorism. As the curtain falls, Skinnybox has attached a rubber hose from the peanut machine to Barrelbottom’s mouth. Skinner stage directions:

 
Barrelbottom now starts to type, first rather hesitantly… Occasionally he bounces off the chair: occasionally he stops to chew peanuts. Professor Skinnybox goes back to reading his Esquire.

The Digest was important in three respects, Travis says. It provided McConnell with an editorial forum: it carried bibliographies of al research relevant to the running of worms and the wider memory-transfer controversy: and it was often sent gratis to those who might be interested.
But in the minds of many influential scientists, especially those in funding capacities, the already-outrageous transfer studies were further damned by their physical proximity to the Digest’s satire and laughter. The ambiguity of humor acted like an amplifier on McConnell’s already-controversial research. By the end of the Sixties he was severed from funding and was subjected to intense derision and prejudicial treatment at meetings and elsewhere. Let’s put it this way, McConnell explained as he wheeled around the Ann Arbor campus in his Mercedes with its BEHAVE license plate. «If my overriding goal was to get the transfer material accepted and win the Nobel Prize and become famous in that sort of way. I certainly would never have started the Digest. Obviously, subconsciously or whatever that wasn’t one of my goals.

 
I went through an angry period in the Seventies. I had fought for four years to get grants. But I’m a person who believes in cutting my losses. In retrospect, the lack of funds forced me to go off and do other things. I never would have written UHB if Uncle Sam had continued to give me lots of cash. And the textbook has been verrry lucrative, and that means freedom. You can straighten a worm, but the crook is in him and only waiting.

Mark Twain

Aside from indulging in satire and parody, McConnell broke other sacred taboos. He disclosed certain mechanical and human failures in the lab. He once admitted, for instance, that his air conditioner had gone on the blink and heated up some animals. Then there was the incident involving RNA: McConnell admitted publicly that some had fallen on the floor and he had scooped it up and stuffed it back into its container. Accidents will happen, but not to scientists. Reporting that we dropped the first RNA on the floor. McConnell commented, is like admitting that one has farted in church.
At the time, though, McConnell had no idea he had so soundly violated the canons of respectability.