Fragments of Behaviour: The Extensional Stance: Context

[David Longley]

Fragments of Behaviour: The Extensional Stance: Context part 2

Full text is available at:

http://www.uni-hamburg.de/~kriminol/TS/tskr.htm

Disclaimer:

The views expressed in these volumes are those of the
author and may not represent the views of the Prison
Service. Any corrections, comments or requests for
further copies should be sent to the author.

'When taught arithmetic in junior school we all learnt
to add and to multiply two numbers. We were not merely
taught that any two numbers have a sum and a product -
we were given methods or rules for finding sums and
products. Such methods or rules are examples of
algorithms or effective procedures. Their implementation
requires no ingenuity or even intelligence beyond that
needed to obey the teacher's instructions.

More generally, an algorithm or effective procedure is a
mechanical rule, or automatic method, or programme for
performing some mathematical operation.'

N.J. Cutland (1980)
Computability: An Introduction to recursive function
theory
Ch 1:Algorithms or effective procedures

Title: PROBE System Specification

Overviews and Introduction

Origin: D Longley, Principal Psychologist, Activity Services

Date: September 1994

Comments on:-

PROBE - The system specification by David Longley, DIP. Volumes 1 to 3.

Reviewer 1

September 1994

The first three volumes of this work are daunting, challenging
and clearly represent a great deal of thought, study and
consideration on the part of the author. It is also rare that a
prison psychologist faces a document of such weight when asked to
read a colleague's work. This is the first thing that
differentiates David Longley's work from that of the average
prison service psychologist (should such a person exist). The
other differences become apparent as this work is read, and the
reader gains the impression that he is imploring them to
reevaluate their role in the organisation. The tasks handed down
by our many leaders and managers do not appear in the scheme of
work as defined in this document, and there is a problem for the
reader. Does this work fit in to the current ways of working, and
if not, could it, and should it and how can it be made to ? By
reading this document one is forced to ask such questions, and as
Longley makes his own position clear, so one is forced to answer
them.

In Volume 1. Longley sets the scene by raising issues which
practising psychologists commonly avoid facing: 'judgment', 'base
rates' and 'Bayes Theorem', 'intension and extension'. He
introduces the subject of logic, which few undergraduate
psychology courses address and this psychologist feels instantly
anxious. He then goes on to illustrate just how important such
issues are, and then how difficult they are to deal with.
Crucially he uses illustrative examples from the psychological
literature (Wason, Johnson-Laird p.17) and reminds us of those
undergraduate lectures where we were praying that the teacher
would not ask us what the answer was. Funnily none of mine ever
did, but always made some quip about 'I'm sure you all know the
answer, which is of course....'.

What Longley also does is explain some of the basis for practices
which counter his logical, scientific view; 'socially conditioned
(induced) intensional heuristics'. The power of such conditioning
should not be underestimated. When professionally applied
psychology does not equate with academic psychology, as is
superbly illustrated on page 27. the applied psychologist is
faced with a dilemma. Answer the question or change the way we
work. Longley tells us to change the way we work as otherwise we
behave like the subjects in the academics' work. He also offers
to help us change the way we work and holds up the PROBE project
as a (the) 'relational system to provide the requisite
distributional data upon which to use the technology of
algorithmic decision making'.

This introduction leads in to an introduction of the Sentence
Management project which is carefully explained as the focus of
behaviour change in the prison system. This is a great relief for
those of us who wonder about the wisdom of a world where group
work is seen as the agent of behaviour change and other
activities as mere 'work'. It is difficult to imagine how anyone
could argue against the proposal that the contingencies in the
work place are important in shaping prisoners' behaviour and that
they should be used to have a maximum effect on 'offending'
behaviour. Here Longley makes his claim on the focus of work, and
the requirement of continual assessment and evaluation.

Allied to this is his point about 'inhibition' of behaviour as
contrasted with 'learning' (page 36-7). Despite so much evidence,
our society appears to have retained faith in the suppression of
undesirable behaviours by the use of punishment or other means.
By focusing on new behaviour Longley presents the alternative,
the development of new skills using principles of reinforcement
and assessing the effects using distributional data. What every
psychologist must surely argue for in the criminological context
(?). He states: 'At present we don't even keep systematic records
of what we do with inmates in activities. How can governors
effectively manage prisons, .... if nobody systematically knows
what they are doing with inmates ?'. This argument does not aline
against the 'what works' literature, but presents a simple
argument; that to know what effect the prison system is having on
the behaviour of prisoners we must record what environmental
conditions they are living and operating in, and how they are
responding or behaving. The only way to do this is systematically
and then we can demonstrate 'suppression' as well as 'learning'.

In the footnote of Volume 1. Longley quotes an Open University
source which notes that .... 'human judges did not like the
results'. This comment typifies reactions of professionals to
arguments in favour of increased actuarial judgement. The fact
that the 'results' are 'not liked' is not a reason for rejecting
the validity of the work however, and the need for professionals
to understand the issues debated here are likely to become
increasingly important as the Prison Service comes under further
public and political scrutiny through its transition into agency
status. When asked how decisions are made, an actuarial judgement
may provide better results (all the evidence suggests so), and
may be easier to defend (using an argument of probability rather
than 'cause' or 'similarity to another case' etc.).

I will not comment on Volume 2. (An empirical illustration) other
than to say that the reports reproduced here provide large
amounts of information in a format which requires some discipline
to read. This will count against an argument for such as system
in a world of 'executive summaries' and 'sound-bites'. Managers
and other prison staff will require an amount of guidance to use
the rich information provided by this system and that task should
belong to psychologists. Such guidance demands a high degree of
understanding however, and reminded me of the difference between
describing your own research to colleagues, where one has had the
opportunity to explore the details of the data beyond that
presented in the final report, and that of describing someone
else's research, which usually involves incomplete statements and
unsure assertions when memory flounders.

This is a real issue for a system which aims to provide as
automated a process as possible and will demand a great deal of
disciplined work among psychologists to achieve the required
understanding. This is perhaps constrained by the difficulties of
training people to use actuarial methods (e.g., Nisbett and Ross
quoted in Volume 1.).

Volume 3. marries together the academic background and the
practical illustration in what is probably individually the most
useful of the three volumes. Longley states in the early
paragraphs: 'no disrespect is intended to any practising field
psychologists....' and yet this material challenges virtually all
working practices of psychology in the Prison Service. The reader
is left with the impression of a purely bi-polar argument whereas
others working in this area have sought smaller shifts in
practice. Clearly not all current practice is 'folk psychology'
although that which corresponds with 'operational behaviour
science' as defined by Longley is largely confined to research
work. The fact that psychologists may well feel fairly defensive
about their professional standing (in comparisons with 'hard'
sciences and medicine for example) does not help Longley's cause
here. The value of the PROBE/Sentence Management system is that
it provides a 'value free' approach and rejects rhetoric.
Unfortunately the conviction of this document may be
misinterpreted as rhetoric by those who have not read the
literature on actuarial and clinical judgement, the contribution
of logic to the development of science and the debates between
philosophers of science.

It is also doubtful whether many psychologists working in the
field (for whom this document largely appears to have been
written), will have considered other issues Longley presents in
Volume 3. For example, many psychologists will not have been
exposed to arguments against confidentiality in a counselling
relationship. The British Psychological Society Code of Conduct
presents an ethical view which is difficult to equate with
Longley's. It could be argued that the least use of this document
is in stimulating debate among practising psychologists about
issues we commonly choose to ignore or take for granted.

A further issue emerging from Volume 3. is that it is not only
professional psychology that is caught up in the operation of
'folk psychology'. Every professional and inhabitant in the
system is a practising folk psychologist (as those of us who work
in establishments are only too aware), and 'helpful extensional
strategies' (p.26) will challenge all. Operating within the
PROBE/Sentence Management system will always require challenging
the everyday explanations of others in the system, and while such
explanations may well be the legitimate target of academic study,
they may also be the largest constraint of all. Once again this
is not an argument against Longley but another area where
enthusiasm is likely to be limited.

On page 31, Longley goes further, and led me to realise what a
sobering thought is presented by his vision of criminological
psychology. That is, what a scientific approach offers is less
than an artistic, creative, solipsistic psychology, not more
than. Just as 'folk physics' can explain all of the physical
world without resorting to evidence, and the concept of 'faith'
rests purely on the absence of evidence, so 'folk psychology' can
operate with enormous potential. All behaviour can be explained
(albeit retrospectively) and all effects on behaviour can be
isolated. 'Theory' does not need to go through the tortuous
routes exercised in 'hard' science; it can simply be written down
with the aid of a few well drafted diagrams.... The fact that
folk psychology is non-science is unlikely to make it
unattractive and the effects of 'social conditioning' mentioned
earlier are unlikely to be positive. One thing that actuarial
judgment gives you is a sense of how wrong you are likely to be
(probabilities again). Folk psychology can explain away anything
without presenting a need to recognise errors; in folk psychology
all 'effects' have 'causes'.

Throughout Volume 3. Longley presents critiques of others' work.
Well informed criticism is likely to be viewed as altercation in
this context, however carefully source material is quoted and
evidence cited. It might have been beneficial to present the
PROBE project as a positive and integral part of the task facing
prison psychologists rather than a 'competitor within'. For
example the role of a relational database containing information
on the attributes and behaviours of all prisoners within the
Dispersal/Cat B system presents an ideal base for systematically
evaluating group programme work (such as the sex offender, anger
management and thinking skills programmes). A research design
could simply be designed around the data, with control groups
providing little difficulty as the database is designed to
contain data on *all* cases, not a sample. The PROBE system could
also be argued to support the 'Key Performance Indictor'
information used to assess prisons. Governors could use standard
reports about the nature of their populations and changes over
time to point to the performance indicators (actuarially)
underlying KPIs. It is probably frustration that prevents purely
positive argument, and the political will within the prison
service (as is political will anywhere) is no respecter of
science.

In Volume 3. Longley presents some neat turns of phrase that make
his work appealing... On page 240 he says '... behaviour science
and management is the business of the Prison Service, just as
medicine is the business of the Health Service'. While this is
undoubtedly true, it may not be respected by those operating (in)
that service.

After reading these three volumes one is left with a sense of
hope for the PROBE system. It is hard to deny that psychology
faces a difficult future without a firm scientific base, and
despite the resistance to 'science' in the field of psychology,
the need for evidence (such as in efficacy of treatments) and the
need for improvements will demand this work be done. It may well
transpire that it will not be psychologists who are asked to do
the work, but 'IT experts' who are not trained in any
behavioural/psychological theory. The consequences of such will
be major. Psychologists are placed in a privileged position in
his volume. Longley argues that the combination of training in
psychological theory and methods, access to information systems
and the support of the Prison Service will lead to an effective
applied behaviour science. It is to be hoped that they (we) are
to be given the chance.

Comments on:-

PROBE - The system specification by David Longley, DIP. Volumes 1 to 4.

Reviewer 2.

September 1994
________________________________________________________________

In my view the Profiling Behaviour (PROBE) system offers Prison
Service Managers a unique facility which, if utilised
appropriately and to its full potential, through the employment
of specially trained behaviour scientists, may provide the
Service with the means of achieving its goals and in so doing,
ultimately its Vision:

"To provide a Service of which the public can be proud
and will be regarded as a standard of excellence around
the world".

Goal 1:To Keep Prisoners in Custody

It is well known that a major problem for the Prison Service at
this point in time is how to deal with the failure of prisoners
to return to custody following the granting of Home Leave. This
is equally as acute when we consider the difficulties associated
with the granting of Temporary Release.

Poor decision making is extremely costly in such instances and
does little to bring the Service closer to achieving its Vision
where the Public is concerned.

The PROBE Home Leave Actuarial Risk Assessment procedure could,
if fully developed, provide managers with a model to assist and
perhaps even ultimately replace, the judgements of the
individuals that constituent the Home Leave Board.

It is obvious that the convening of Boards is expensive, both in
terms of time and money. Therefore the development of a computer
model which produces results at least as effective and perhaps
even more effective than any Board, must be an attractive option
to any forward thinking manager.

In my view therefore, behaviour scientists should be given the
time and resources to fully develop such a system, so that
managers could be provided with probability estimates of any
prisoner belonging to a Home Leave failure group. Such a system
should ultimately be extended to include the development of a
model for use with prisoners to be considered for Temporary
Release.

Obviously, it is a nonsense for such a system to be restricted
only for the use of those working in Dispersal Prisons. Indeed,
it is establishments at the other end of the security category
(ie. C's and D's) which are likely to benefit most from the
development and employment of such a system.

Goal 2:To Maintain Order, Control, Discipline and a Safe Environment

The maintenance of order, control and discipline within our
prisons and the creation of a safe environment for both prisoners
and staff to live and work in, are fundamental requirements for
the success of the Prison Service of the future. The Public,
particularly in recent years, in the aftermath of the Strangeways
and Wymott riots, has been made all too aware of the consequences
of the breakdown of control and discipline and of staff and
prisoners fearing for their safety within the prison setting.
Inevitably then, they will look to the Service to devise improved
methods of control, which will substantially reduce the
likelihood, or at the very least improve our preparedness for,
order breaking down within our prisons.

In my view the PROBE Behaviour Monitoring Control and Allocation
Profiles provide the Prison Service with one such method. The
PROBE system's capacity for generating individual behaviour
profiles, producing aggregated population data, producing
establishment profiles of adjudications, analysing behaviour
checklists based on staff observations and the producing of
thematic and spatial maps, are facilities which are, at the
present time, unique and which, if utilised to their full
potential, offer managers a level of insight into the nature of
their populations never before available to them.

Whilst the development of such procedures and routines has, to
date, been concentrated in the Dispersal prisons, experience
would suggest that lower category prisons and Local prisons would
benefit equally from the installation of such systems. The
investment of resources into the full development and extension
of such systems would have as its payoff a valuable Management
Information System which might serve as a basis for making better
operational decisions relating to the maintenance of control.

Goal 4:To provide Positive Regimes which help prisoners address
their Offending Behaviour and allow them a full and responsible
life as possible

Goal 5:To help prisoners prepare for their return to the
Community

If the Prison Service is truly to become a Service "regarded as a
standard of excellence around the world", then it is critical
that it develops Regime opportunities for prisoners that impact
on their offending behaviour and prepares them for their return
to the community. Currently the Service has no systematic
information and knowledge concerning the true impact of Regime
opportunities on prisoners behaviour.

The PROBE Behaviour Modification System (Sentence Management &
Plans) in my view seeks to readdress this problem by affording
managers the opportunity of monitoring the impact of Regime
Activities on any individual's behaviour on a monthly basis. Such
measures of behaviour can also be compared against Residential
behavioural measures. The system, by routinely identifying
prisoners who are performing well or poorly for any given
Activity and\or Residential Unit and placing these alongside
individual control measurements (ie. NIC, S-Factor), allows
managers to make decisions regarding the setting of appropriate
short and long term targets, which seek to impact directly on
behaviour and against which the progress of the individual
prisoner can be measured across time.

The operation of such a system, if properly resourced, would in
my view, offer the Service its best opportunity to date to
monitor its progress in achieving Goals 4 and 5.

Comments on:-

PROBE - The system specification by David Longley, DIP. Volumes 1 to 4.

Reviewer 3

September 1994
________________________________________________________________

CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF PROBE SYSTEM SPECIFICATION

The PROBE System Specification provides for the first time a
comprehensive description of the ideas behind and practical
implementation of PROBE. It includes everything from the
'Academic Context' of the work to detailed listings of the
complex retrievals and batch files needed to make the system
function. It is unfortunate that this high quality document was
not available several years ago. In my opinion, the academic
background section could have been presented as a short summary
of the concepts behind PROBE and a representative sample of
references to work done in this area. I would suggest that over
intellectualising has at times detracted from a clear
presentation to psychologists and governors of what, despite its
complexity, is basically a practical database application.

Volume 2 describes in detail how the Sentence Management system
can be used and what results can be derived. Some of the graphs,
particularly the line graphs are difficult to interpret due to
attempting to represent too many establishment data sets on one
graph.

In volume 3, section 1 provides a clear and useful account of
some general system issues, database structure, training,
efficiency, costs etc. Section 2 describes some of the major
current applications of PROBE. It demonstrates the usage of
across establishment analysis of transfers and adjudications. The
information on Spatial Mapping should be particularly useful to
field developers. Section 3 covers the results which are
obtainable from the sentence management system.

Volume 4 is in my opinion the core of the System Specification.
It describes with clarity and detail all the inner workings of
field and headquarters nodes. While the overall structure of the
wide area network is described, it might be easier to visualise
it, if it were presented in a diagrammatic form. Similarly, the
operation of the overnight routines may be more quickly
assimilated by a software maintenance engineer if they were
accompanied by some form of system flowchart.

SUMMARY

The PROBE System Specification provides a comprehensive account
of the work which has lead to the current state of development of
the database and supporting routines. In itself it forms an
important part of the PROBE system and will prove invaluable to
those who will develop and maintain the system in the future.

Comments on:-

PROBE - The system specification by David Longley, DIP. Volumes 1 and 2.

Reviewer 4

September 1994
________________________________________________________________

PROFILING BEHAVIOUR (PROBE) SYSTEM SPECIFICATION VOLUMES 1 & 2

This document describes a framework for facilitating the use of
systematic information as a basis for making decisions which are
central to the operation of any prison establishment. Volumes 1
and 2 will prove challenging and thought-provoking to anyone with
a professional interest in the management of prisons.

The first volume describes the academic context for the
development of the PROBE relational database. It demands the
reader to focus on fundamental aspects of the management of
prisons and invites a re-appraisal of some of the current systems
of operation. Approaches to the assessment of prisoner behaviour,
the organisation of activities for prisoners and the role of
Applied Criminological Psychology in prisons come under scrutiny.
The complex and lengthy development of arguments in this volume
can be daunting and require focused concentration in order to
gain an appreciation and understanding of the content. However if
the reader perseveres the guiding principles behind PROBE are
made explicit thereby setting the context for subsequent volumes.

Volume 2 provides a clear and accessible account of how the PROBE
system can be applied in a prison situation. The detailed
examples successfully illustrate the potential usefulness of the
database. There are convincing demonstrations of the way the
system has been used at different levels of the organisation -
from the day-to-day population management of individual prisons
to the development of a broader perspective across
establishments. The reader is also prompted to think beyond the
specific examples and recognise how use of the system could be
extended to play a key role in a range of central tasks carried
out by establishments. These may include the evaluation of
activity programmes and Key Performance Indicator performance.

Comments on:-

PROBE - The system specification by David Longley, DIP. Volumes 1 to 3.

Reviewer 5

September 1994
________________________________________________________________
PROBE: THE SYSTEM SPECIFICATION

I recently asked a colleague what was the difference between
PROBE and LIDS, she said 'PROBE is like a history book that is
updated every day and LIDS is a daily paper rewritten every day.
In this simple statement she has captured a lot. It is well
known that the best indicator of future behaviour is past
behaviour and therefore the history book will be of more use to
us in monitoring and shaping inmate behaviour than the daily.

I was asked to comment on this System Specification for PROBE as
someone who has worked with PROBE since its arrival in the field,
and therefore in a position to judge if it truly reflects the
PROBE system.

Reading this document is hard work, principally I felt this is
caused by the frequent use of references in the text. The
content itself is both logical and accessible (bearing in mind
the first comment), and the depth of analysis is considerable.
It's not just a description of how a series of PC's are linked
together to collect data. It is an explanation of both how the
PROBE system functions and why it functions in that way.

Since joining the Prison Service I am aware that there is a more
positive/constructive attitude within Prison Psychology. Much of
this has come about with the rejection of the 'nothing works'
philosophy. This has led to the development of regimes and
behaviour modification programmes, and evaluation of this is made
possible by PROBE.

Why should you read this - I would encourage you to read this
document because it will help you to re-evaluate your current
practice. I would particularly recommend volume 1 pages 50-76 on
Clinical vs. Actuarial judgement. In the days of open reporting
both internally and for the Courts, it could save you many
sleepless nights.

Comments on:-

PROBE - The system specification by David Longley, DIP. Volumes 1 and 3.

Reviewer 6

September 1994
________________________________________________________________

The PROBE system has the potential to enhance the management and
reform of prisoners and thereby to assist the Prison Service in
achieving its aim of helping prisoners 'to live law abiding and
useful lives in custody and after release'. As such, far from
being scaled down, it should be maintained in the prisons in
which it is already in place and, when possible, extended
throughout the system.

As I understand it, PROBE can help the Service to meet its aims
through improving predictions. The PROBE system is capable of
making predictions about an individual's future behaviour and
about the effect of particular experiences on future behaviour -
and to do so more accurately than people. PROBE is thus able to
enhance decision making in relation to prisoners by improving
predictions concerning the outcome of such decisions. The
potential implications of this in terms of improvements in the
management and reform of incarcerated offenders are profound and
far-reaching. Armed with an enhanced ability to predict the
outcome of home leaves, governors' decision making in relation to
home leave applications would be improved. Likewise, better
predictions about the effects on recidivism of particular regime
elements would lead to better matching of prisoners to activities
and so, ultimately, to reductions in re-offending.

PROBE makes predictions as follows:

(i) Data are collected and stored in a relational database,
relating prisoners's behaviour at time t with their behaviour and
experiences up to time t.

(ii) These data are analysed, using the technique of logistic
regression, to produce prediction equations in relation to
particular behavioural outcomes.

(iii) Data on an inmate about whom a prediction is to be made is
fed in to the relevant prediction equation, which is then
computed, generating a prediction about the likelihood of a
particular outcome occurring.

Humans can not, Longley suggests, make such accurate predictions
as PROBE. This is because people can not store or process as much
information as a computer and, unlike computers, peoples'
information processing is subject to all manner of biases and
inaccuracies.

In addition to describing, and making the case for, PROBE,
Longley makes a number of other observations.

x Information concerning mentalistic states, events and processes
can not be used in making scientifically supportable predictions,
both for empirical and logical reasons. Empirical considerations
include, most obviously, the fact that prisoners can not be
relied upon to tell us the truth, especially when, as they often
do, they have a vested interest in not telling the truth. The
logical problem with mentalistic statements in science can not be
summarised succinctly, but is clearly explained by Quine and
others (cf Word and Object, Quine, 1960).

x What within the Prison Service lifer management system has been
called "risk assessment" involves human judgement which, as
noted, it is suggested, is of only limited value. In addition,
Longley argues that identifying to prisoners behaviours which are
supposed to be indicative of continued risk will lead to
suppression of those behaviours and thus to the illusion of
change where none has occurred.

x In attempting to generate long term change we should, Longley
argues, take advantage of all that is available within a prison
regime, and not just special programmes. This could only be done
however if backed up by an actuarial decision making tool such as
PROBE to help match experiences to prisoners' needs.

Many have said that they do not agree with what Longley is
suggesting. It is difficult for those who believe that they have
special powers of insight to accept his claims. Unfortunately for
them, Longley provides copious, and I believe incontrovertible,
evidence in support of his claims. The implications for prison
psychology are clear:

1 PROBE should be maintained and, when possible, extended
throughout the system;

2 "Risk assessment", and indeed any form of clinical judgement,
should be abandoned;

3 Whilst special programmes may have their place, the focus of
attempts to modify prisoners' behaviour should be extended to
encompass the entire prison regime - something that PROBE may,
ultimately, allow us to do.

I have recently been involved in evaluating the National Anger
Management Group, using a conventional random allocation
controlled study (Shepherd, 1994). A more appropriate way to have
conducted such research, would have been to use the PROBE system.
Using PROBE would remove the need for data to be collected
specifically for the purposes of evaluating the programme, and
would allow us to answer many of the questions the current study
leaves unanswered, without the need for elaborate and time
consuming experiments. It would even remove the need for a
control group, and all the practical and ethical problems that
entails.

Behaviour profiles before and after treatment could be examined
for those attending the programme. If their profiles were to
evidence a consistent discontinuity between pre and post
treatment, this could reasonably be attributed to an effect of
treatment. The magnitude and longevity of any discontinuity would
provide a meaningful measure of the magnitude and longevity of
any effect.

As well as providing profiles of behaviour, the PROBE system
holds a variety of other information, (such as offence type,
previous convictions and previous custodial experience). Once a
sizeable number of prisoners had been treated, a logistic
regression analysis could be conducted to identify groups of
prisoners with regard to whom the programme might be
differentially effective, and allow any such differences to be
quantified. Identifying which, if any, elements of the programme
are its "active ingredients", would be less straight-forward, but
could be ascertained by comparing, with the effects of the full
version of the programme, the impact on behaviour profiles of
variants of the programme from which particular elements had been
omitted.

The PROBE system could also be used to shed some light on the
issue of how any "active ingredients" of the programme might
work. If the programme has an impact on disruptive behaviour via
improved anger management, behaviour would also be expected to
change in other ways, consistent with reductions in the frequency
and intensity of anger - where such changes would, if they
occurred, be reflected in changes in the behaviour profiles of
the prisoners concerned. Likewise, if, as it is suggested,
reductions in anger are achieved in part by improved conflict
resolution and avoidance skills, this too would be expected to be
reflected in prisoners PROBE profiles.

o o o End Reviews o o o

Finally, before moving on to the introduction, here are some
comments from a) a past Director General, and b) an independent
outside consultancy group on the PROBE system and its management
prior to the writing of this System Specification, and prior to
the rather radical decisions about the system's future which were
made in early 1994.

Mr X

I mentioned to you (and to Mr Y) the excellent presentation
that DPS had given me a fortnight or so ago on their work in
developing PROBE. This is just to put on record the
suggestions that I made to them and passed on to you and Mr
Y.

The need to give a similar presentation on PROBE to the
various dispersal prisons groups (including senior members of
the Cat A section) so that everyone at the relevant
management levels is fully seized of the value of the
material that is available - you may think it useful to give
the material to a wider audience.

Mr W
25 June 1990

'Before launching into the recommendations, this report
wishes to stress that fundamentally, PROBE offers an
extremely high level of service to its users within the field
Psychology Units. They have access to significant computer
processing power, to a powerful and flexible database
management system and they can use some sophisticated
software facilities for research and analysis work.

In addition, there are surrounding controlling processes for
transferring data between sites, plus they have access to
their own and other units' data, which have been implemented
so as not to interrupt the basic service provided during
normal working hours. Much of the credit for this must go to
DIP2 in developing such a sophisticated operating environment
over the years and to their commitment in running this
operational system now.'

(p.38, Hoskyns Report September 1993).

Management of PROBE

Finally, because of the current production nature of PROBE,
serious consideration has been given to recommending that the
system should be handed over to be run by PSITG. PSITG would
then become responsible for day to day system management,
help desk support, training, etc, with DIP2 being able to
concentrate on research and offering only specialist advice.

Although the staff within DIP2 would then be able to
concentrate on research, there would still be a staff
requirement within PSITG to run the system. Such a move would
therefore have a cost implication, with perhaps little
benefit from an improved service.

As an entirely pragmatic approach, it is concluded therefore
that the system continues to be run by DIP2, but with a
Project Board to provide direction and ensure that the system
meets the needs of all users within Headquarters and
operational establishments.'

(P.42, Hoskyns Report, September 1993)

'We think of a science as comprising those truths which are
expressible in terms of 'and', 'not', quantifiers, variables,
and certain predicates appropriate to the science in
question....To specify a science, within the described mold,
we still have to say what the predicates are to be, and what
the domain of objects is to be over which the variables of
quantification range.'

W.V.O. Quine (1954)
The Scope and Language of Science
The Ways of Paradox and other essays p.242

'Calculemus.'

G W Leibniz (1679)

'Thus we have arrived at something fundamental: our
conventions regarding the use of the words "not" and "or" is
such that in asserting the two propositions "object A is
either red or blue" and "object A is not red," I have
implicitly already asserted "object A is blue." This is the
essence of so-called *logical deduction*. It is not then, in
any way based on real connections between states of affairs,
which we apprehend in thought. On the contrary, it has
nothing at all to do with the nature of things, but drives
from our manner of speaking about things. A person who
refused to recognize logical deduction would not thereby
manifest a different belief from mine about the behaviour of
things, but he would refuse to speak about things according
to the same rules as I do. I could not convince him, but I
could refuse to speak with him any longer, just as I should
refuse to play chess with a partner who insisted on moving
the bishop orthogonally.

What logical deduction accomplishes, then, is this: it makes
us aware of all that we have implicitly asserted - on the
basis of conventions regarding the use of language - in
asserting a system of propositions, just as, in the above
example, "object A is blue" is implicitly asserted by the
assertion of the two propositions "object A is red or blue"
and "object A is not red."

In saying this we have already suggested the answer to the
question, which naturally must have forced itself on the mind
of every reader who has followed our argument: if it is
really the case that the propositions of logic are
tautologies, that they say nothing about objects, what
purpose does logic serve?

..logical propositions, though being purely tautologous, and
logical deductions, though being nothing but tautological
transformations, have significance for us because we are not
omniscient. Our language is so constituted that in asserting
such and such propositions we implicitly assert such and such
other propositions - but we do not see immediately all that
we have implicitly asserted in this manner. It is only
logical deduction which makes us conscious of it.

If I have succeeded in clarifying somewhat the role of logic,
I may now be brief about the role of mathematics. The
propositions of mathematics are of exactly the same kind as
the propositions of logic: they are tautologous, they say
nothing at all about the objects we want to speak about, but
concern only the manner in which we want to speak of
them....We become aware of meaning the same by "2+3" and by
"5", by going back to the meanings of "2," "3," "5," "+," and
making tautological transformations until we just see that
"2+3" means the same as "5". It is such successive
tautological transformation that is meant by "calculating";
the operations of addition and multiplication which are
learned in school are directives for such tautological
transformation; every mathematical proof is a succession of
such tautological transformations. Their utility, again, is
due to the fact that, for example, we do not by any means see
immediately that we mean by "24 x 31" the same as by "744";
but if we calculate the product "24 x 31", then we transform
it step by step, in such a way that in each individual
transformation we recognize that on the basis of the
conventions regarding the use of the signs involved (in this
case numerals and the signs "+" and "x") what we mean after
the transformation is still the same as what we meant before
it, until finally we became consciously aware of meaning the
same by "744" and by "24 x 31."

..at first glance it is difficult to believe that the whole
of mathematics, with its theorems that it cost such labour to
establish, with its results that so often surprise us, should
admit of being resolved into tautologies. But there is just
one little point which this argument overlooks: it overlooks
the fact that we are not omniscient. An omniscient being,
indeed, would at once know everything that is implicitly
contained in the assertion of a few propositions. IT would
know immediately that on the basis of the conventions
concerning the use of the numerals and the multiplication
sign, "24 x 31" is synonymous with "744". An omniscient being
has no need for logic and mathematics. We ourselves, however,
first have to make ourselves conscious of this by successive
tautological transformations, and hence it may prove quite
surprising to us that in asserting a few propositions we have
implicitly also asserted a proposition which seemingly is
entirely different from them, or that we do mean the same by
two complexes of symbols which are externally altogether
different.'

H Hahn (1933)
Logic, Mathematics and Knowledge of Nature
In Ayer (Ed) Logical Positivism (1959)

--
David Longley
'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`''`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'
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[David Longley]

Fragments of Behaviour: The Extensional Stance: Context Part 1

Full text is available at:

http://www.uni-hamburg.de/~kriminol/TS/tskr.htm

In the USA, I think it's true to say that more is spent on incarcerating
criminals than is spent on higher eductation system. Yet the former only
works by keeping criminals out of circulation - it does not work by any
rehabiliative effect. What follows is no panacea, just an infrastructure
for better management of behavour in custody. The primary objective here
is to provide all concerned with better information upon which to base
the management of behaviour. Whether this actually leads to anything of
social value is an empirical matter. However, until such systems are put
into place, and properly managed, I doubt very much whether we will be
able to achieve anything more than incapacitation.

The key to such systems is the notion of "effectivity", or computability.
In actual practice this comes down to "actuarial" in place of "clinical"
analysis.

PROFILING BEHAVIOUR (PROBE)
A SYSTEM SPECIFICATION
OVERVIEWS AND INTRODUCTION
September 1994

'We consider ourselves distinguished from the ape by the
power of thought. We do not remember that it is like the
power of walking in the one-year old. We think, it is
true, but we think so badly that I often feel it would
be better if we did not.'

B Russell
(in Faith and Mountains
cited in R M Dawes (1988)
Rational Choice in an Uncertain World)

'Regardless of how much we stand to gain from supposing
that human behavior is the proper subject matter of a
science, no one who is a product of Western civilization
can do so without a struggle. We simply do not want such
a science.'

B F Skinner (1953)
Can Science Help? - The Threat to Freedom
(in Science and Human Behavior p.7)

'The most characteristic thing about mental life, over
and beyond the fact that one apprehends the events of
the world around one, is that one constantly goes beyond
the information given'.

J Bruner (1957)
Going Beyond The Information Given
(in H Gulber and others (eds)
Contemporary Approaches to Cognition)

'Thesis: Owing to the abusive reliance upon significance
testing - rather than point or interval estimation,
curve shape, or ordination - in the social sciences, the
usual article summarizing the state of the evidence on a
theory (such as appears in the Psychological Bulletin)
is nearly useless.'

P E Meehl (1986)
What Social Scientists Don't Understand
(in Metatheory in Social Science
Eds D W Fiske & R A Shweder p.325)

PREFACE

The primary purpose of the 10 volumes which comprise 'A System
Specification for Profiling Behaviour (PROBE)' is to outline, for
prison psychologists and their managers, the rationale, and
practical potential of working within a formal, logical,
normative system such as PROBE. This system was developed within
the English Long Term Adult Male Prison System between 1986 and
1994. Since its inception, various other notions such as 'Action
Research', 'Operational Psychology' and other terms have been put
forward in a similar vein, however, given that all of the work of
an Applied Criminological Psychologist is by definition
operational and action based, one might be forgiven for
construing attempts to introduce such terms as being indicative
of something having gone fundamentally wrong. These volumes begin
with a diagnosis and explication. In fact, Volumes 1 through 3
cover some of the key issues in contemporary psychology, drawing
considerably on the work of B.F. Skinner, W.V.O. Quine, and P.E.
Meehl. However, its main intellectual source is Recursive
Function Theory, which has its origins in the work of Turing
(1936) and Church (1936) c.f. Cutland 1980. With these
intellectual debts stated at the beginning, the ensuing PROBE
System Specification outlines a formal infrastructure, i.e. a
System Specification for Profiling Behaviour within the English
Prison System.

Readers should note that it aims to provide no more than a formal
infrastructure. A full practical implementation of PROBE would
require commitment from administrators along with resourcing and
support considerably in excess of that which has been invested to
date. From psychologists it requires a willingness to work as
behaviour scientists, that is, a determination to work within the
scope and language of science, not folk psychology. It also
requires them to abandon the vacuous methodology of Hybrid-
significance Testing (Gigerenzer & Murray 1987) as a basic
technology of evaluation. At the time of writing, and despite
having taught to the contrary for six years, most evaluations of
programmes still rest on doing little more than rejecting the
null hypothesis. Given that the null hypothesis is always false,
rejecting it is more a function of statistical power than
anything else. If less than one in twenty academics appreciate
this point (Meehl 1986), the prevailing state of affairs within
(and outside) Prison Psychology should not be surprising. The
fact is that few understand that significance tests only tell us
how often our pattern of data may occur by chance, and tell us
nothing about the likelihood of the researchers substantive
theory or hypothesis. This is an important theme of this System
Specification, and is discussed in detail in Volume 1. After
having read Volumes 1 and 3, it should be clear why the above is
so. It should also become clear that the error committed by so
many researchers occurs because of a pervasive intensionality
within contemporary psychology. If not already clear, the issues
should become so after the reader has read the extracts from
Meehl (1967, 1978, 1986), and after having considered those
points in the context of the differences in power and precision
between the predicate vs. propositional calculus, (Jeffrey 1988;
Jeffrey & Boolos 1989).

This particular document comprises both an 'Overview' and an
'Introduction' to the material which comprises a 'Specification
for Profiling Behaviour', a formal infrastructure which has been
practically developed over the past 10 years, theoretically for
about 20 years, and which has been operational for 7 years. The
Overview presents a set of critical reviews by a group of staff
who kindly agreed to read and review the first drafts of Volume 1
through Volume 4. The actual volumes reviewed are cited at the
head of each review. Each reviewer was asked to provide a short
review something akin to a book review. They were asked to pitch
it to be suitable for their colleagues and their colleagues'
managers. The reviews were independent and appear as submitted
except for formatting.

The second part, the 'Introduction' largely comprises excerpts on
various logical issues which run throughout the main volumes.
This use of extracts from key sources continues throughout
Volumes 1 to 3, and has been adopted because so much of the
material is drawn from work which is often physically
inaccessible to staff working within prisons. Not only does the
approach save the reader from having to send off for references,
it also saves them a considerable amount of redundant reading.
The reader is encouraged to work through the material, since
PROBE has been designed, first and foremost as an infrastructure
within which Behaviour Scientists can practice and develop their
professional skills in an applied setting. Much of the academic
material is shown to be highly relevant to the practical problems
facing the applied psychologist. At a time when all are being
encouraged to justify their work in terms of Prison Service KPIs
and the Corporate and Business Plan, one might have expected the
system to have been presented with more explicit references to
Strategic Priorities. One of the major themes of the PROBE System
Specification, is however, the failure of Leibniz's Law within
epistemic and other intensional contexts. The relevance of the
system to the KPIs and Strategic priorities are here, and the
motivated reader should have little difficulty identifying where
the links are. One of the main objectives of the System
Specification is to encourage users to use the system themselves,
and it is unlikely that this will come about if all of the work
is done for the reader. Hence the strategy has been to present
examples, encouraging users to work within the infrastructure
rather than outside of it.

That infrastructure is based on the constraints of Relational
Theory. For the purposes of this System Specification, Relational
Theory is presented within a logical rather than set-theoretic
context (see Date 1992 and Volume 3). Practically, and in a
nutshell, the benefits of working within the proposed
infrastructure (or one structurally akin to it) are the benefits
and constraints of the formal 'scope and language of science'
(Quine 1954).

The PROBE system is designed as an infrastructure to support the
measurement and analysis of behaviour by providing a logical
structure within which behaviour predicates (Volume 5) can be
recorded of individuals, which can then be analysed to support
more objective management of those individuals than is possible
using intuitive professional judgement. A predicate is a
declarative term which can be said to be true or false of an
object or individual, hence much of the human decision making
must be made at very early stages of classification. Using the
language of function and argument, an individual can take one or
more of a set of finite valid values as arguments of a relation,
or function. Once decided upon, it is the business of science to
draw upon the laws of logic and mathematics to examine and
extract any further lawful relations which might exist between
such values. One can do this in one's head if one wishes, but the
evidence suggests that the support of extensional, actuarial
technology is far more defensible.

For example, simple frequency distributions are an important and
fundamental start. From these we can examine the distribution of
classes of behaviour, ie the base-rates, relative frequencies or
unconditional probabilities. Next we can examine joint
frequencies, ie associations or correlations between classes
(e.g. report rate and age group). We can go further still and
look at multi-variate influences on a dependent measure (such as
Home Leave Failure, or attendance and performance on a programme
or within an activity), and on the basis of such relations, we
can improve our management of behaviour at the group and
individual levels. With such information, work at the population
and individual inmate management level is put on a professional
footing.

Much of what is said in Volumes 1 and 3 illustrates how very
difficult it is to do this if one relies on intuitive skills
rather than extensional technology. The simple case is made that
it is only by working within a formal logical and actuarial
context that we are able to make objective transformations of the
data within our domain of concern, and that accordingly, all
Applied Criminological Psychologists ought to invest extensively
in such technology, throughout all steps of their career. The
technical skills required are not intellectually demanding, nor
are they de-skilling. They do however require time, logic and its
application.

The reader should not be left with the feeling that what is on
offer is a complex set of mathematical tools. On the contrary,
the basic rules are 'effective', ie algorithmic, and all such
processes are simple computations which are extremely simple
steps of behaviour. What seems to distinguish them from normal,
intelligent, human reasoning, is that effective processes do not
'go beyond the information given', but carefully, and rigorously
(some would say, pedantically) unpack the information which is
already logically entailed (c.f Popper 1959). Their unattractive
quality is that they are *so* simple. They are robotic, which is
to say - they are hard work. Here is how Turing introduced the
notion of effectivity (which Church 1936 equated with recursive
functions):

'The Computer

Computing is normally done by writing certain symbols on
paper. We may suppose this paper is divided into squares
like a child's arithmetic book. In elementary arithmetic
the two-dimensional character of the paper is sometimes
used. But such a use is always avoidable, and I think
that it will be agreed that the two-dimensional
character of paper is no essential of computation. I
assume then that the computation is carried out on one
dimensional paper, ie on a tape divided into squares. I
shall also suppose that the number of symbols which may
be printed is finite. If we were to allow an infinity
of symbols, then there would be symbols differing to an
arbitrarily small extent.

The behaviour of the computer at any moment is
determined by the symbols which he is observing, and his
'state of mind' at that moment. We may suppose that
there is a bound B to the number of symbols or squares
which the computer can observe at one moment. If he
wishes to observe more, he must use successive
observations. We will also suppose that the number of
states of mind which need to be taken into account is
finite. The reasons for this are the same character as
those which restrict the number of symbols. If we
admitted an infinity of states of mind, some of them
will be 'arbitrarily close' and will be confused. Again,
the restriction is not one which seriously affects
computation, since the use of more complicated states of
mind can be avoided by writing more symbols on the tape.

Let us imagine the operations performed by the computer
to be split up into 'simple operations' which are so
elementary that it is not easy to imagine them further
divided. Every such operation consists of some change in
the physical system consisting of the computer and his
tape. We know the state of the system if we know the
sequence of symbols on the tape, which of these are
observed by the computer (possibly with a special
order), and the state of mind of the computer. We may
suppose that in a simple operation not more than one
symbol is altered. Any other changes can be split up
into simple changes of this kind. The situation in
regard to the squares whose symbols may be altered in
this way is the same as in regard to the observed
squares. We may, therefore, without loss of generality,
assume that the squares whose symbols are changed are
always 'observed' squares.'

Alan Turing (1936)
On Computable Numbers, with an application to the
'Entscheidungsproblem' (Hilbert's decision problem)

When Putnam introduced machine functionalism into psychology in
the 1960s and 1970s, he had a precedent, for in 1936 the computer
as we know it today had not been invented. What Turing was
describing above was the operations of a human being, whose job
it was to compute. This was the model upon which his universal
Turing machine was built. Nor should the reader be deterred from
working through the material because of the significant role
which deductive logic plays in the specification. Ordinary
language simply is not up to the task as Tarski (1931) pointed
out:

'[Where] colloquial language is the object of our
investigations. The results are entirely negative. With
respect to this language not only does the definition
of truth seem to be impossible, but even the consistent
use of this concept in conformity with the laws of
logic.

In the further course of this discussion I shall
consider exclusively the scientifically constructed
languages known at the present day, ie. the formalized
languages of the deductive sciences.'

A. Tarski (1931)
The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages

and

'It is often argued in favor of the language of first-
order logic that it is universal in a certain sense.
Roughly speaking the claim is that anything sayable in
any language is sayable in a standard first-order
language. (A more radical view is that anything
thinkable is expressible in a first-order language).'

D J Israel and R J Brachman (1984)
Some Remarks on the Semantics of Representation Languages
in Eds Brodie et. al On Conceptual Modelling

One of the major themes of these volumes is to clarify the above
statement in the spirit of Wittgenstein (1922), but drawing on
Quine's skills of exorcization (1956), and thereby highlight
precisely what can, and what can not be said. Part of the impetus
behind this is the very practical constraints one confronts when
using a 4GL to write intelligent reports. The propositional
calculus is only a start, and as will soon become apparent, one
requires the power of the predicate calculus and its deductive
power to say anything intersting based on the data maintained
within PROBE. In this context, Davis (1988), reviewing the
relationship of Mathematical Logic to Computing wrote:

'One of the first things a novice user of a computer
must learn is that computers tend to be totally
unforgiving of "minor" lapses in notation. Who has not
experienced the frustration of being required to re-
enter a long line of text simply because a comma
somewhere should have been a period? We may say that
computer languages (programming languages, operating
systems, etc.) have a totally prescribed formal syntax.
The idea that a specially created language could be
useful for extending the range of what could be
accomplished by computation goes back to Leibniz.
However, the first actual example of a formal language
was presented by Gottlob Frege in his Begriffsschrift
(1879). His Begriffsschrift contained, for the first
time ever, a formulation of what has come to be called
first-order logic. But most important of all for
computer science was Frege's clear demonstration of how
to construct and deal rigorously with a formal
language....Just how remarkable Frege's work was becomes
clear on comparing it with that of his successors.
Important contributions were made by E. Schroder, G
Peano, and by Bertrand Russell. But this work, mostly
done during the early years of the twentieth century,
fell far short of Frege's level of rigor....

Emil Post's dissertation (1921) marked a return to
Frege's standards of rigor... In particular, Post
studied the problem of finding algorithms by which it
could be mechanically determined whether particular
formulas in the language of Principia Mathematica could
be derived using the rules of the language. Post solved
only the first part of the problem; he found algorithms
for the part of Principia Mathematica that we now call
the propositional calculus. Post's efforts to extend
these results led him to consider formal operations on
strings in the most general context, which he called
productions.

Post productions are ubiquitous in computer science.
Their first application was by Noam Chomsky, who found
in them exactly what he needed for his revolutionary
theory of the grammars of natural languages. This led
Chomsky to his now famous classification or hierarchy of
languages based on the specific kind of Post productions
permitted in their defining grammars. The connection
with computer science became apparent when it turned out
that one of Chomsky's classes consisted of just the
languages that could be recognised by a finite
automaton, and that another, the so-called context free
languages, consisted of the languages recognisable by
finite automata equipped with an auxiliary push-down
stack. Apparently independently of Chomsky 's work,
John Backus used Post productions to provide an
appropriate syntax for the developing programming
language ALGOL 58. And then it turned out that the class
of languages that could be described in terms of Backus'
syntax were exactly Chomsky's context-free languages!

The all-important, but basically simple, observation
that every electrical circuit contained switches could
be usefully interpreted as a formula of the
propositional calculus was made by Claude Shannon in his
Master's thesis (Shannon 1938). The idea was just to
interpret "true" and "false" as corresponding to a
switch being open or closed respectively. The Boolean
connectives "and" and "or" then corresponded to switches
being connected in series and parallel, respectively.
The connections between logic and computer science are
two-way. The realisation that the logical complexity of
a Boolean formula is closely related to the number of
elements needed (and hence to the cost) of the
corresponding circuits led the logician and philosopher
W. V. Quine to work on the combinatorial problem of
finding the smallest formula that can represent a given
Boolean function (Quine 1952). Soon this material became
a standard text book topic.'

M Davis (1988)
Influences of Mathematical Logic on Computer Science
in The Universal Turing Machine: A Half Century Survey
Ed: R Herken

With respect to PROBE, it is assumed that all of the relations we
can be concerned with exist (ie can be made the value of a bound
variable) in our universe of discourse. At present, we may not
have all of the requisite elements within our database, but that
can be rectified in time. It is also an assumption, albeit one
supported by considerable evidence, that it is only the
constraints of our Central Nervous Systems which prevent us from
grasping all such relations. A physical study of such constraints
(neophobia - the sine qua non for learning) was the subject of a
four year MRC post-graduate studentship at the National Institute
for Medical Research between 1979 and 1983 (Deakin and Longley
1981; Longley 1983).

Conceptually the major obstacle for PROBE users is the fact that
substitutivity of identicals does not occur in psychological
contexts. In many respects this is related to a natural fear of
the unfamiliar (neophobia), a defense mechanism designed perhaps
to prevent us experiencing everything, and therefore, nothing.
Our expectations are frequently challenged when we come to
appreciate that two things were one all along, and we are
frequently frustrated because if we knew that in the first place
we would have solved many a problem. The PROBE System
Specification is basically a specification of a system which may
help behaviour scientists to identify relations which otherwise
would be harder to identify. To that extent. The reader is
encouraged to consider carefully the extract from Jeffrey (1989)
on identity and inference and consider seriously the potential
merits of Leibniz's dream of our one day being able to turn to
independent formal systems to resolve disputes (although it must
be made clear from the start, that it will be argued that the
solution does not lie in the ritualistic use of Neyman-Pearson or
Fisherian statistical testing and the absurd search for
significant p values. Rather, it lies in sound descriptive
analysis and data transformation, ie deductive inference based on
sound observation and recording of behaviour). Those who prefer
the alternative given the evidence, which will be reviewed in the
following volumes, are probably artists at heart, not scientists.
A System Specification for Profiling Behaviour will not be to
their liking, since it eschews all that is central to art, ie,
intension.

Those who do choose to work through the material may find it
helpful to re-read the introduction and overview at times. Each
volume has its own set of indices on subject, names and files.
Similarly, references are provided at the end of each volume.

[David Longley]

Fragments of Behaviour: The Extensional Stance: Context Part 3

Full text is available at:

http://www.uni-hamburg.de/~kriminol/TS/tskr.htm

A SYSTEM SPECIFICATION FOR PROFILING BEHAVIOUR
_______________________________________________
PROBE

AN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
_______________________________________________
D Longley, Principal Psychologist, October 1994

These 12 volumes present a computerised system for monitoring and
managing inmate behaviour within the English Prison Service. Developed
primarily in the Maximum Security Long Term Prison Estate between 1987
and 1994, the system is designed to provide managers with
comprehensive information on the behaviour of inmates in response to
the day to day demands of residential routines and day time
activities. Although long-term prediction of complex dynamic systems
can be extremely difficult, recording what occurs over time can
provide reliable measures of differential change. The major products
of the PROBE system are computer generated reports on the behaviour of
individual inmates throughout sentence, showing their relative
performance on a monthly level as well as trends over longer periods.
The PROBE system also provides profiles of behaviour at the wing and
prison level, thereby allowing managers to monitor long term changes
in the average behaviour of their population by wing or even landing.
Comprehensive, and standardised, behaviour profiling is therefore
available from the individual inmate level over time, all the way up
to comparative profiles between whole establishments, sub-
establishments and wings, over time. All such profiles can be
generated automatically by selecting an option from a local menu, or
by downloading a file from a central computer.

'A System Specification for Profiling Behaviour' in 12 volumes, begins
with a series of overviews of PROBE written by various field
psychologists, along with an introduction to the academic background
which lies behind the system.

Volume 1 provides a survey of some of the key areas in behaviour
science bearing on the system. Although not comprehensive, what is not
covered explicitly is covered implicitly. The main issues covered
include the relative merits of adopting an entirely behavioral or
third person approach to managing inmates rather than attempting to
work to include an inmate's point of view. In other words, the PROBE
system adopts a standard, scientific approach which is based on an
axiom of the predicate calculus which seems to be inapplicable within
psychological contexts. This is a central theme which is elaborated in
the first three volumes. This stance is further developed by providing
a review of the current state of research on the use of actuarial
(statistical) judgement rather than clinical, or personal (intuitive)
judgement. The case is made that the latter can only ever be an
approximation of the former at best. Most managers today are too busy
to be able to make optimal decisions without the support of
Information Technology and this is likely to continue to be so. The
case is made that managers must therefore make greater use of such
systems, and that behaviour scientists must invest more time in their
production. This leads naturally on to a consideration of the
appropriate technology to support the actuarial stance, and to a
critical evaluation of current practices adopted by psychologists in
their design and evaluation methods (largely attempts at simple
factorial designs which test that differences between groups are
unlikely to be explained on the basis of chance alone). The case is
presented that this is possibly one of the worst things that ever
happened in psychology, and that all too few psychologists (less than
one in 20) appreciate the weakness of such an approach. The volume
makes the case that a more descriptive approach to data collection and
research must be adopted now that systems are available to profile
entire populations, and that such data should be functionally analyzed
using simple regression technology with an aim to establishing and
testing point predictions, and improving on those predictions as is
done in the rest of physical science. The volume continues with a
brief, but comprehensive survey of the literature on 'What Works' in
the way of programmes for prisoners, and concludes with a brief
presentation of a computerised system for managing, monitoring, and
assessing inmates' participation in activities throughout sentence in
the interests of effective inmate sentence management, planning and
throughcare.

Volume 2 provides a report on a pilot of the PROBE Sentence Management
system introduced in volume 1. Conceived in 1991 and 1992 as a
flexible, user defined behaviour assessment system, and developed
between 1992 and 1993 when it ran at HMP Parkhurst and HMP Frankland,
the pilot study was overseen by a DIP Steering Group commissioned by
the Director of Inmate Programmes during a DIP Senior Management
Seminar held at Newbold Revel in March 1992 (DIP Research Report No.
2, November 1992). The pilot was completed in January 1994, and volume
2 serves as an empirical illustration of how the prototype system ran
in an applied context. The volume includes reports from the Head of
Inmate Activities at HMP Parkhurst and the psychologist who oversaw
the pilot at that prison. The volume illustrates how comprehensive
management information can be provided in simple descriptive graphical
form as box-plots which show the distribution of behaviour on the
landings and within activities, readily identifying inmates with
scores at the upper and lower ends of the scale. The volume also shows
how individual and group based reports of inmate performance and
attendance can be automatically generated for Heads of Residence and
Heads of Activities. All attainment measures are functionally related
to measures of control, and it is shown how the PROBE Sentence
Management System can be used to facilitate the maintenance of control
through effective, and positive Sentence Planning by providing an
infrastructure within which individual inmate targets can be
identified, negotiated, contracted and subsequently monitored by the
first-line staff who have the most contact time with inmates. It is
emphasised that it is those staff who are responsible for directly
training and supervising inmates within specific domains of expertise,
and for want of an adequate technology, such staff's observations and
assessments often go totally unrecorded. The volume illustrates how
the technology of Sentence Management can be used to make effective
use of such staff's professional assessment skills in the interest of
recording and shaping positive behaviour change throughout sentence,
allowing decisions to be subsequently made on the basis of
differential levels of attainment. The case is made that since it is
here that the Prison Service invests in maximally, it is here that our
technology for monitoring and recording behaviour change must be
focused. Collation, standardisation and presentation of the
information recorded can be undertaken by computer. Quality control
lies largely in the hands of higher management.

Volume 3 provides a functional specification of the entire PROBE
system. Part one covers the logic and technology of relational
database technology, showing how this relatively recent technology
supports the application of behaviour science in an applied setting,
and how such a system can serve well as a Management Information
System. Section 1 also outlines the main elements of the PROBE system,
explaining how the communications network functions to support the
entire system and the staff maintaining it. Section two provides
graphical illustrations of how the system has been used in support of
maintaining control within the Adult Long Term estate, how routine
profiles of inmate movements, disciplinary offending and segregation
histories can be generated from local menus, and how profiles at the
wing and establishment levels can be readily produced in support of
operations. Section three shows how the system can be used as a
support system for F2054 Sentence Planning, drawing on monthly
Sentence Management data to identify suitable Sentence Plan targets.
Thus, whilst section two outlines the technology of PROfiling
BEhaviour, ie measuring and describing behaviour, section three
provides a technology for PROgramming BEhaviour, ie providing a means
of effectively managing inmate behaviour under the rubric of Sentence
Planning. This technology provides managers for the first time with a
system which enables them to effectively manage or programme inmate
activities at the individual and regime level.

Volume 4 provides a detailed description, at the computational level,
of the programming which comprises the system. This is the main
Technical Specification of the PROBE system. Sections 4 through 9
detail how each class of computer system within PROBE is actually
configured, the software which runs on each system, and how each class
of system is scheduled to operate at different stages of the day and
week. This includes a detailed description of the automatic screening
of candidates for Special Units, the generation of comparative
statistics for the dispersal prisons each week, the production of
daily quality control reports, and so on.

Volumes 5 and 6 list the fixed data dictionaries for the PROBE
database at Adult and Young Offender sites respectively, along with
example code for the data entry system. These two volumes specify
precisely the predicates which are used to classify inmates, the range
of the valid values for those predicates, and their labels. The adult
system comprises 34 tables of predicates or relations. Development
work within the Young Offender system, whilst relatively recent,
illustrates that the system can be used as an effective substrate for
behaviour science and technology within any convicted population which
is practically concerned with Sentence Planning. The Sentence
Management records illustrate how sophisticated use of relational
theory can be used to extend the data dictionary ad infinitum without
having to make structural changes to the data dictionary per se. From
a technical perspective, this may well be a unique feature of the
PROBE system.

Volume 7 lists the computer on-line help script for the system. This
is basically the user's on-line manual which provides explicit,
context sensitive instructions as to how each field in the database
must be maintained, e.g. the codes for an inmate's index offence, his
preconvictions, and where to find these in the prisoner's record. As
changes are made to the system over time, new help scripts can be
automatically distributed over the electronic network and
automatically installed.

Volume 8 provides the material for a 3 day course on PROBE. Material
covered includes basic programming using the 4th Generation
Programming Language (PQL) provided with the system, illustrated
examples of how to use a wide range of output procedures, and how to
use more advanced programming facilities such as TABFILES and MATRIX
operations. In effect, in conjunction with the reference manuals and
other volumes of the System Specification, this volume comprises a
comprehensive self-instruction course in the PQL programming language
which is the basis of all of the report writing facilities within the
PROBE system.

Volume 9 provides an illustration of the weekly statistics generated
automatically by the system. These show comparative figures for the
dispersal prisons, and for other PROBE maintaining prisons within the
Long Term Category B estate. These statistics include the distribution
of security category, sentence length, and so on across PROBE sites,
first for the dispersal estate, and then the other category B prisons.
Additional comparative statistics show control indices by wing within
a prison, and between prisons. Rudimentary data on inmates who have
been in Special Units are compared with normal location inmates,
illustrating the potential for detailed follow up.

Volume 10 provides a list of the essential procedures held within the
PROCEDURE file of the Data Base Management System. These Procedural
Query Language routines are an essential part of the PROBE system at
each installed site. As new systems are developed, they are
automatically distributed to all field sites to ensure that all
facilities are standardised.

Finally, a General Index is provided. Each of the preceding volumes is
provided with references, subject indices, names indices, files
indices and where appropriate a list of the attributes used within the
Data Base Management System. This document collates all of those
indices and references into one convenient reference volume.

All volumes beyond volume 3 are essentially technical material. A
summary of what the system can provide as a Management Information
System can be gleaned from Volume 3, sections 2 and 3. Managers'
attention is drawn to the fact that the comparative graphics and
tables covered in those sections are refreshed each Sunday night, and
are electronically available to Psychology Units every monday morning.
For specific coverage of PROBE in support of inmate activities and
Sentence Planning, the reader is referred to volume 2 and section 3 of
volume 3. For the specific rationale behind the system given what is
known about normal human decision making and its constraints, the
reader is referred to volume 1 and to section 1 of volume 3.

The documentation describes the PROBE system as it was when managed
within the Directorate of Inmate Programmes. The 1994 reorganization
of Headquarters led to the loss of the posts which developed and
supported PROBE. Responsibility for day to day technical management of
the system now lies with Prison Service IT Services, and policy
responsibility with Custody Group.

The future of the PROBE system therefore rests to a very large extent
in the hands of field staff and it is hoped that the provided
documentation goes some way towards consolidating the infrastructure
which has been built up over the past eight years. It is also hoped
that those now contributing towards the federated system will insist
on the continuation of a high level of central support, maintenance
and oversight of the system sufficient to sustain comparative
profiling which is an essential element of overall system quality
control. Quality control and feedback being the sine qua non of PROBE
as a system, with the changes in system management in 1994, it must be
emphasised that the integrity of the system now rests much more so in
the hands of field staff. The future integrity and standardisation of
the system will depend as much upon feedback to central support on the
accuracy of the weekly statistical profiles made available on the
central system, as it will on local quality control.

[David Longley]

A more elaborate form of behaviourism?:

'The picture that emerges from this discussion of the
circumstances that produce conditioning is quite
different from that given by the classical descriptions.
Pavlovian conditioning is not a stupid process by which
the organism willy-nilly forms associations between any
two stimuli that happen to co-occur. Rather, the
organism is better seen as an information seeker using
logical and perceptual relations among events, along
with its own preconceptions, to form a sophisticated
representation of the world. Indeed, in teaching
undergraduates, I favour an analogy between animals
showing Pavlovian conditioning and scientists
identifying the cause of a phenomenon. If one thinks of
Pavlovian conditioning as developing between a CS and a
US under just those circumstances that would lead a
scientist to conclude that the CS causes the US, one has
a surprisingly successful heuristic for remembering the
facts of what it takes to produce Pavlovian associative
learning (see Dickinson, 1980, Mackintosh 1983).
-
R. A Rescorla
Pavlovian Conditioning
It's Not What You Think It Is
American Psychologist, March 1988.

Much of the work done in psychopharmacology requires one to get
animals up to some sort of baseline of behaviour to test the
effects of drugs on that baseline of behaviour. But that also
means that much of the acquisition or variation has dropped out
or been configured as an overall molar response. But during the
early phases of getting an animal up to baseline, one has to
train it where the food is going to appear, in fact, one has to
train it that the little pellets *are* food (overcoming natural
neophobia). Then comes shaping which can take a couple of 20
minute sessions. Over the first 5 days, during the acquisition
period, the animals tends to progress up the so-called learning
curve until it reaches a plateau or 'asymptote'.

It is, in my opinion, during this shaping and acquisition period,
that most of the interesting behaviour can be seen, but it is not
generally recorded by the standard operant recording equipment
which only records bar press frequency or pressure. The recording
equipment is blind to the topography of the behaviour, ie the
form of the responses. A rat may press a bar with its left paw,
right paw and next time its nose, then from under the bar. When I
was working in the area I was struggling to think like those who
were just working in experimental psychology within models such
as the Rescorla-Wagner model of "classical" conditioning, trying
to translate that via Baum's work and others into operant work,
*and* undertake a fine grained analysis of what was happening in
the Skinner Box *without* the recording equipment which is
required to obtain hard data.

Extinction measures such as latency to last response and rate of
responses per minute provide *some* data, based on the idea that
lots of P -> Q

ie "press_lever_this_way" THEN "food_pellet_pops_out_over_there"

R-S* links have to be broken during extinction which may not be
integrated (this is where the 'Fragments of Behaviour' and
Extensional Stance began, back in 1981). But really the problem
is that we were not recording the typology of behaviour properly
- the equipment just isn't designed to record anything other than
frequency of behaviour.

Getting back to schizophrenia, I suspect that deficits in Kamin's
(1969) blocking effect (a phenomenon which can be seen to be
basic to configuring in conditioning) along with more fine
grained, automated analysis of the topography of acquisition and
extinction would solve many of the animal model problems.

We are distracted by the self-reports of humans in most areas of
analysis, what we find valuable in human schizophrenics is the
behaviour of such individuals in comparison to non-
schizophrenics. As I have tried to say elsewhere, this is
generally the case in behaviour science, but it does require
exceptional attention to details of behaviour which most of us
find exceptionally difficult to do without going beyond what is
presented, ie 'going beyond the information given' and resorting
to propositional attitudes (cf. past illustrations with indirect
quotation). It is *so* difficult, & *so* alien to common-sense
(natural assessments, folk-psychology) that I'm surprised we make
and sustain any progress whatsoever. But if we are to make
progress, it requires us to pay much greater attention to
behaviour and eschew the relatively easy language of
"cognitivism" - - - of that I am sure.

The Rescorla-Wagner Model of Classical conditioning can be
regarded as a naturalistic decision making model under
conditions of uncertainty (see also Mackintosh 1977, Rescorla
1988). Alan Wagner, (1978) has pointed out that the model can be
looked at in terms of primimg STM, and has elsewhere proposed
that the approach is compatible with Attribution Theory
(Naive Psychology). The fact that there can be multiple
extensional models illustrates the thrust of the Loweheim-Skolem
Theorem).

The model looks to trial by trial changes in associative
strength, which overall is represented by a measure of
conditional probability (relative frequency) between potential
CSs and UCSs in the establishment of event-event associations,
be these R-S, S-S, S-R or R-R.

Where the conditional probability between the events is low,
there will be greater conditioning to non-target stimuli,
effectively conditioning to background (see abstracts at the end
of this note on the work of Odling-Smee 1975,78). Most of the
work to date has been done using aversive UCSs (cutaneous,
exteroceptor mediated). However, within the notes on endogenous
opiates I have suggested that physiological states such as
hypoglycemia (glucagon, insulin), hypernatremia (angiotensin,
vasopressin) and sexual 'drives' (possibly LHRH mediated)
comprise UCS's of the milieu interne (the precise neurochemistry
and physiology is for neuroscience to ascertain).

In the case of these UCSs, where the UCRs are behaviours
directed reflectively to the termination of the drive states
(UCSs), the distance and contact exteroceptors are the
modalities which mediate the conduction of potential CSs.

This note is a conjecture about how the above processes may
work with respect to sexual behaviour, and how some basic
anatomical/physiological sex differences may account for some
more elaborated behavioural differences in the sexual
behaviour of males and females.

The core of the Rescorla-Wagner model is as follows:

Va=alpha.beta(lambda-Vx)

Va is the associative strength accruing to the target (nominal)
CS. Alpha and beta are learning rate parameters, or
weights. These may be thought of in terms of parameters which
acknowledge the differential conditionability, or preparedness
of specific modalities (cranial nerves or spinal) within a
parallel distributed processing system. (Which we only
partially, and inaccurately, have access to as ourselves).

Lambda is the amount of associative strength supportable by the
UCS which might be a measure of its intensity (in the case of
electric shock, this would be a measure in milliamps). Vx is
the competing conditional probability, or relative frequencies
of all other stimuli in the ambient array (these must of course
include interceptive stimuli.

The following makes a start (as there is no research to date)
at looking at the implications of the model for sexual
behaviour and possibly, differences in aspects of associated
social behaviour between the sexes.

Anatomically/physiologically, males have a considerably larger
amount of erectile tissue than do females. In females, the
erectile tissue is spatially distributed (clitoris and nipples),
although with different rate parameters. In males it is, to all
significant extents and purposes, restricted to the penis.

Secondly, the male orgasm terminates with ejaculation (Masters
and Johnson define the 'two' as co-extensive). Whilst there
is some evidence for a kind of female ejaculation (basically
lubricating fluid), the evidence suggests that this is
phylogenetically vestigial, and probably goes unnoticed by
females.

With these differences, one might expect male sexual behaviour
to to conditioned as follows. With repeated sexual
experience, the male learns that erection and genital
stimulation terminate sexual desire. The focus being the penis,
its erection, ejaculation, and flacidity. In the case of
the female, orgasm will be associated less with any
clearly identifiable, ie localisable, physiological
responses. Note that here we are looking for distinguishing
features between male and female, not commonalties.

In the case of the female, the antecedents (potential CSs),
will, in terms of the Rescorla-Wagner model, be more
diffuse stimulus conditions. This is partly because the
erectile tissue is itself more widely distributed over the
body, and also because of its size and relatively speaking,
gradual change from non-arousal to arousal, orgasm through to
the resolution phase. All of this makes for lower
discrimination in terms of JNDs, compared to males.

In the case of males the stimulus conditions are very different.
They are more focal (in terms of spatial and temporal
contingency) and therefore, in terms of the model, more
conditionable. Sexual behaviour focuses around the penis,
and its physiology. In many ways this may also be the case
for the female, but only because of its relative salieny.

In the context of recent discussions about the resistance of
intuitive judgements to training, I thought it might be
worthwhile outlining the above in the context of the Rescorla-
Wagner model. In the first place the model and variants of it
is the most successful summary of the conditioning data.
It is also a naturalistic model of decision making under
conditions of uncertainty, illustrating, from another
perspective, how biases come about and how heuristics are
learned.

The Sex differences used above, are clear
In Butts and Hintikka (eds.) Foundational
Problems in the Special Sciences, p.241-50

Wagner A (1988) Expectancies and The Priming of STN
In Hulse, Fowler and Honig
Cognitive Processes in Animal Behavior

Rescorla R. (1988) Pavlovian Conditioning: It's Not What You
Think It Is.
American Psychologist, March 1988, 151-60

[David Longley]

In article <4q4nd5$d...@totara.its.vuw.ac.nz>

Da...@longley.demon.co.uk "David Longley" writes:
>
> The Sex differences used above, are clear
> In Butts and Hintikka (eds.) Foundational
> Problems in the Special Sciences, p.241-50
>
> Wagner A (1988) Expectancies and The Priming of STN
> In Hulse, Fowler and Honig
> Cognitive Processes in Animal Behavior

Some of the original text has been lost in transit. I repeat the
missing section below:

The Sex differences used above, are clear

anatomical/physiological differences, and yet, from the way the
model is constructed, one would expect there to be
substantial differential effects in terms of rate parameters and
the nature of the stimuli which comprise Vx.

Some of the above might be considered in the context of
relationship and other social skill training work. It is meant as
nothing more than a speculative contribution to the matter of
whether or not there might be some fundamental, non-cultural,
differences between the sexes in terms of their demands for
intimacy. If there is anything to the above, albeit very
rough, analysis, it may be true that such differences can
not be significantly altered by training. As with the other
work on Heuristics and Biases, the problem is more fundamental,
and demands that we restrict ourselves to extensional analysis.

It is also designed to illustrate how we may seem to agree on the
use of words, but without public referents, such agreement may not
be agreement at all, just lack of communication (knowledge). This
is why methodological solipsism is so vacuous.

Mackintosh N.J. (1977) Conditioning as The Perception of Causal
Relations.

In Butts and Hintikka (eds.) Foundational
Problems in the Special Sciences, p.241-50

Wagner A (1988) Expectancies and The Priming of STN
In Hulse, Fowler and Honig
Cognitive Processes in Animal Behavior

Rescorla R. (1988) Pavlovian Conditioning: It's Not What You
Think It Is.
American Psychologist, March 1988, 151-60

The following comrpises a couple of (IMHO) the most interesting studies
within the Rescorla and Wagner paradigm:

Two experiments investigated the capacity of a nominal CS to
overshadow background stimuli. 141 male hooded rats received CS-
shock pairings in one compartment of a double compartment
apparatus. After training the shock compartment was represented
but in the absence of both the CS and shock. Overshadowing was
then assessed by measuring S's latency to enter this compartment.
If Ss readily entered the shock compartment this indicated that
the background cues in that compartment had acquired little or no
associative strength during training, and overshadowing was
therefore inferred. If Ss avoided the shock compartment, this
indicated that the background stimuli must have become aversive
during training, and overshadowing could not be inferred. In both
experiments it was found that the capacity of a CS to overshadow
background stimuli was directly related to the amount of training
given and shown that this capacity was inversely related to shock
intensity. Results are discussed in terms of R. A. Rescorla and
A. R. Wagner's (1972) model of conditioning. (14 ref)

The overshadowing of background stimuli: Some effects of varying
amounts of training and UCS intensity.
Odling-Smee,-F.-J.
Brunel U, Uxbridge, England
Quarterly-Journal-of-Experimental-Psychology; 1978 Nov Vol 30(4) 737-746

Investigated the role of background stimuli during Pavlovian
conditioning in 2 experiments with a total of 124 male hooded
rats. Groups of Ss were presented with tone conditioned stimuli
(CSs) and unavoidable footshock unconditioned stimuli (UCSs).
Both CS-UCS conditional probabilities and UCS intensity were
manipulated across groups. Subsequently all Ss were tested for
their reactions to the environment in which had previously been
trained. During tests neither the CS nor the UCS was presented.
It was found that the degree to which Ss avoided the environment
was inversely related to the probability of the CS being followed
by a UCS and directly related to the level of UCS intensity to
which they had been exposed during training. Results largely
support R. A. Rescorla and A. R. Wagner's (1972) theory of
Pavlovian conditioning.

The role of background stimuli during Pavlovian conditioning.
Odling-Smee,-F.-J.
Brunel U, Uxbridge, England
Quarterly-Journal-of-Experimental-Psychology; 1975 May Vol 27(2) 201-209

This work, in conjunction with the recent work by Gluck and Bower (1988,1990)
which makes the link with artificial neural networks and the heuristics and
biases work comprises (IMHO) a very powerful basis for an extensional science
of behaviour.