Awhile back I was invited to a special prison not far from Tokyo. It was the only prison in Japan for recidivists. A prison for people who had committed and been found guilty of a second crime punishable by prison.
There were roughly 2000 prisoners. All male.
Not only were these prisoners well behaved, but as we toured the prison, they were very quiet and were not allowed to look at us visitors. We were shown their quarters as well as their exercise, work environment and dining hall. They were trained in a wide range of modern job skills with up-to-date technological equipment.
That is not the point of this blog. The most significant observation, for me was that there was a tiered hierarchy of rewards that was very effective in maintaining control.
In our society rewards are very explicit and the jumps from bottom to top are very large. A prisoner may get cigarettes, a larger cell without a cellmate, outdoor work duty…. a whole range of significcant rewards.
In this Japanese prison there were only three categories of rewards. One example was the frequency of getting a new toothbrush from one every two weeks for good behavior down to the lowest, one every three months. The same was true for washcloths. One new wash cloth each month or one every four months for bad behavior. For the best behaved there was white rice, the middle step was a mixture of white and brown rice and the bottom category was pure brown rice.
These very minor gradations seem to be sufficient to incentivize the men.
Of course this Japanese prison did not resemble anything in America. It was clean, it was beautifully maintained and most of all ….it was quiet.