The Effects of a DRO and Self-Monitoring Program on Prisoners in an Italian Prison

Pascale’s team worked with 16 men in an Italian prison. Each man had a long record of serious rule breaking—destroying property, hurting himself, or attacking others.

The researchers used DRO plus self-monitoring. The men carried small cards and marked every five-minute block they went without the problem behavior. If the card was full at the end of the shift, they earned extra yard time or phone minutes. Staff checked the cards but gave almost no extra prompts.

Every inmate cut infractions by at least a large share. Property destruction dropped from daily events to zero in the first week for most men.

Social-validity scores were high: guards said the plan was fair, and inmates said it helped them “keep cool.” Effects held for the full three-month follow-up.

Regnier et al. (2022) reviewed token-economy maintenance and named self-monitoring as a key add-on. The prison study is a live example of that exact package—thinning external control while the men tracked their own behavior.

Justus et al. (2023) used a hand counter to help teachers self-monitor praise. Both studies used multiple-baseline designs and got big gains with minimal staff training, showing the tool works for prisoners and teachers alike.

Gaucher et al. (2020) tested DRL with autistic preschoolers and saw only modest drops in behavior. Their result looks weaker than the prison DRO, but DRL purposely allows some responses while DRO aims for zero—different goals, different sizes of change.

You can run a safe, low-cost DRO program in a high-security setting. Give the learner a simple way to track the absence of the problem behavior, then let natural reinforcers (yard, phone) do the work. Try this first with one client who has frequent, clear episodes; five-minute intervals and a printed card are all you need to start.