Behavior management plans (BMPs) are temporary deprivation experiences that have been advertised as promoting the discontinuance of habitual misbehavior in institutions. In practice, these interventions are often invoked in retaliation or as punishment when individual inmates are uncooperative or troublesome. In settings that already offer a rock-bottom quality of life—such as segregation units in prisons—BMPs reliably call for intolerably stressful conditions that tend to compromise the mental health of persons who are subjected to these conditions. The cycle is predictably exacerbated when the behavior that is targeted is symptomatic of mental illness in the first place, as is frequently the case.
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Skinner, B.F. (1972). Punishment: A questionable technique. In R. H. Walters, J. A. Cheyne, & R. K. Banks (Eds.), Punishment (pp. 23- 33). Baltimore: Penguin. (Original work published 1953)
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Toch, H. (2003). Walker comment. Correctional Mental Health Report,5, 33-38.
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Walker v. Montana. (2003). 316 Mont. 103, 68 P.3rd 872.
