Editorial: To license or not to license? That is the question: Or, if we make a profession, will they come?

Abstract

With many state and federal agencies pushing for accountability and evidence supporting the effectiveness of behavioral health practice (see New Freedom Commission's Report on Mental Health, 2003) and analysis's unique contribution to evidenced based practice (see O'Donohue & Ferguson, 2006), many states are giving the professionalization of analysis a second look. This is a second look, because professionalizing analysis through regulation and licensure was proposed before, in the 1970s. The context then was very different. The focus was on an effort to balance the potential of modification with the tendency for abuse. Like today, many in the field opposed it suggesting it was a danger to the advancement of the field (e.g., Goldiamond, 1975). While many of the arguments today appear to be a rehashing of those past arguments, as a field, we undoubtedly have an advantage this time: a learning history. From the past round of events with the correctional system, we can look at the outcomes and reflect upon them to help decide our current choices. This brief editorial attempts to look at the environment at the time, the behavioral responses our field made, and the contingencies that the larger culture responded with and subsequent effects on the field of those contingencies. In the late 1960s, a growing disillusionment with the prison system in the U.S. occurred. Ramsey Clark (1970) a former U.S. attorney general stated in the United States today are more often than not manufactures of crime ... [They] are usually little more than places to keep people-warehouse of human degradation (p. 213). Criminologists argued that the prison system functioned as a training ground for crime (e.g., Wilkins, 1969). These growing concerns led the Federal Bureau of Prisons in the 1970s began to assign the planning and management of inmate programs to treatment teams, which at the time had psychologists and psychiatrists who had an interest in behavior modification. Several other antecedents favored modification in general and analysis programs in particular moving into prisons. These factors included a growing consensus that sociopathy was impossible to treat by traditional psychotherapy (Cleckley, 1976; McCord & McCord, 1964) and that the medical model was declining in its influence in prisons (Allen & Gatz, 1974). In addition, the Federal Bureau of Prisons in an effort to combat recidivism set three goals for the prison system: (1) inmates would leave with at east a six grade reading level (2) prisons would help inmates get a high school diploma or equivalence and (3) job skill training. At this time, analysts were emerging from the laboratory interested in applying their knowledge to real world problems. Soon behavioral models of common prisoner problems were beginning to emerge and seemed promising (i.e., Jackson, Glass, & Hope, 1987; Newman & Kosson, 1986; Schmauk, 1970). These models often focused on responses prisoners made under reward or punishment conditions. In addition, prison based treatment models based on operant principles such as contingency management began to emerge for adult offenders (i.e., Bishop, & Blanchard, 1971; McKee, 1971) and adolescent delinquents (Cohen & Filipczak, 1971; Jeness & DeRisi, 1973). In line with the goals of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, these behavioral models focused on both changing behaviors, which brought the person to prison and enhancing academics and skill learning. In the early 1970s, the state of the literature on behavioral interventions for inmates seemed promising for academic and behavioral problems in adult prison (Allyon & Roberts, 1973; Bassett, Blanchard, Harrison, & Wood, 1973; Bassett, Blanchard, & Koshland 1975; Clement & McKee, 1968; Schnelle & Lee, 1974; Levinson, Ingram, Azcante, 1968; Milan & McKee, 1974) and in psychiatric facilities for adult prisoners (Boren & Coleman, 1970; Coleman & Baker, 1969; Coleman & Boren, 1969; Lawson, Greene, Richardson, McClure & Padina, 1971) although follow up data was scarce. …