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An Alternative to Punishment
Sunday, May 9th, 2010
Robert Wechsler
This is a follow-up to yesterday's blog post on ethics fines. This
week, I've been reading Karen
Pryor's bible on positive training, Don't Shoot the Dog: The New Art of
Teaching and Training (Bantam, 1999).
I'm reading the book to get ideas for training the puppy I will soon be getting. Positive training is a more humane and, supposedly, more effective approach than traditional obedience training.
Reading the book, and especially the chapter on ways of getting rid of behavior you don't want, made me think that more consideration should be given to the traditional ways used to prevent officials from dealing irresponsibly with their conflicts of interest.
The important first step is to consider what is the goal of government ethics. Do we really just want to get rid of misbehavior, or do we want officials to learn how to behave properly?
The Problems with Punishment
In dealing with ethics violations, most people focus on penalties which, in the training as well as the criminal context, is referred to as "punishment." Pryor points out some serious problems with punishment. First of all, it doesn't work, and the punisher is not in control of how it works or doesn't work.
Second, when it doesn't work, the usual response is to escalate the punishment (think Three Strikes and You're Out). Where else is there to go? Again, the punisher is not really in control.
Third, what those who are punished primarily learn is to try harder not to get caught. The usual responses to punishment include evasiveness and distrust of whoever is doing the punishing (this is certainly true of most councils whose members have been punished by ethics commissions).
Fourth, punishment is a form of dominance and revenge, two things that escalate the ugliest things about politics which are, coincidentally enough, dominance and revenge.
An Alternative to Punishment
What are the alternatives to punishment? Karen Pryor lists eight alternatives, the most serious of which, in the government ethics context, is the removal of the official. All but one of the others do not apply to government ethics, because unethical behavior tends to be self-reinforcing. That is, as with a dog barking on and on, it benefits the official, at least until he's punished.
The other thing to note is that, in the human context, mimicking is far stronger than it is among dogs; that is, unethical behavior spreads. And dogs rarely conspire, either to act or to keep silent about what they know (they keep silent, but it's not an aspect of an organizational environment, even at a kennel).
For government officials, the alternative to punishment is to train the absence of the misbehavior. Or put positively, to train officials to deal responsibly with their conflicts.
The first step in the training process is to get the emotions out of it by showing officials that it's not about being a good or bad person, but about being a responsible, professional person or an irresponsible, unprofessional person. This step is necessary due to the confusion of character and government ethics (yes, many ethics code violators have character problems, but emphasizing this is counter-productive).
Similarly, it is important to present government ethics as a central aspect of democracy, where government officials, elected or appointed, are intended to represent the public interest, not their own interests or the interests of other individuals who specially matter to them.
The second step is to train officials in the art of recognizing conflicts and dealing with them responsibly. Doing this involves both information and praise. In other words, an ethics training program for information and, for praise, an ongoing program of positively reinforcing ethical conduct by including ethical conduct in employee reviews, praising those who speak honestly and openly about ethical situations in staff meetings, giving awards for ethical conduct, prominently listing which officials, departments, and agencies file their disclosure statements on time, and talking publicly about government ethics even when things aren't going wrong, by emphasizing not the lack of ethics complaints, but the sizeable number of requests for advice, recusals, training program attendance, and full, on-time disclosure statements.
Ethics commissions and officers do not have the luxury of giving treats or saying "Good girl!" to officials (but supervisors do). However, they should, first and foremost, be a positive guide to and reinforcer of ethics requirements. The better job they do at this, and the less officials try to use their dominance to prevent this from happening (dogs, as dominant as they may want to be, are pretty much stuck doing the training their masters set out for them), the less ethics commissions and officers will have to resort to punishment.
The Calvinistic State of Our Judgment
As Pryor says in her book, "American society is, for all its freedom, a punitive society. We carry a burden of Calvinistic negativeness that colors all our institutions and much of our judgment." Government ethics is one place where it is clear how much Calvinistic negativeness has ruined our judgment. Out in the real world, it seems as if few government ethics discussions shows good judgment on anybody's part.
Government ethics practitioners, and that includes government officials, need to get more creative, and more positive, in how they approach their work. Try positive reinforcement on your pets or your children, and you'll see how much more rewarding it is, for everyone. Then think of the ways it can be applied to the dogged problems of government ethics.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
I'm reading the book to get ideas for training the puppy I will soon be getting. Positive training is a more humane and, supposedly, more effective approach than traditional obedience training.
Reading the book, and especially the chapter on ways of getting rid of behavior you don't want, made me think that more consideration should be given to the traditional ways used to prevent officials from dealing irresponsibly with their conflicts of interest.
The important first step is to consider what is the goal of government ethics. Do we really just want to get rid of misbehavior, or do we want officials to learn how to behave properly?
The Problems with Punishment
In dealing with ethics violations, most people focus on penalties which, in the training as well as the criminal context, is referred to as "punishment." Pryor points out some serious problems with punishment. First of all, it doesn't work, and the punisher is not in control of how it works or doesn't work.
Second, when it doesn't work, the usual response is to escalate the punishment (think Three Strikes and You're Out). Where else is there to go? Again, the punisher is not really in control.
Third, what those who are punished primarily learn is to try harder not to get caught. The usual responses to punishment include evasiveness and distrust of whoever is doing the punishing (this is certainly true of most councils whose members have been punished by ethics commissions).
Fourth, punishment is a form of dominance and revenge, two things that escalate the ugliest things about politics which are, coincidentally enough, dominance and revenge.
An Alternative to Punishment
What are the alternatives to punishment? Karen Pryor lists eight alternatives, the most serious of which, in the government ethics context, is the removal of the official. All but one of the others do not apply to government ethics, because unethical behavior tends to be self-reinforcing. That is, as with a dog barking on and on, it benefits the official, at least until he's punished.
The other thing to note is that, in the human context, mimicking is far stronger than it is among dogs; that is, unethical behavior spreads. And dogs rarely conspire, either to act or to keep silent about what they know (they keep silent, but it's not an aspect of an organizational environment, even at a kennel).
For government officials, the alternative to punishment is to train the absence of the misbehavior. Or put positively, to train officials to deal responsibly with their conflicts.
The first step in the training process is to get the emotions out of it by showing officials that it's not about being a good or bad person, but about being a responsible, professional person or an irresponsible, unprofessional person. This step is necessary due to the confusion of character and government ethics (yes, many ethics code violators have character problems, but emphasizing this is counter-productive).
Similarly, it is important to present government ethics as a central aspect of democracy, where government officials, elected or appointed, are intended to represent the public interest, not their own interests or the interests of other individuals who specially matter to them.
The second step is to train officials in the art of recognizing conflicts and dealing with them responsibly. Doing this involves both information and praise. In other words, an ethics training program for information and, for praise, an ongoing program of positively reinforcing ethical conduct by including ethical conduct in employee reviews, praising those who speak honestly and openly about ethical situations in staff meetings, giving awards for ethical conduct, prominently listing which officials, departments, and agencies file their disclosure statements on time, and talking publicly about government ethics even when things aren't going wrong, by emphasizing not the lack of ethics complaints, but the sizeable number of requests for advice, recusals, training program attendance, and full, on-time disclosure statements.
Ethics commissions and officers do not have the luxury of giving treats or saying "Good girl!" to officials (but supervisors do). However, they should, first and foremost, be a positive guide to and reinforcer of ethics requirements. The better job they do at this, and the less officials try to use their dominance to prevent this from happening (dogs, as dominant as they may want to be, are pretty much stuck doing the training their masters set out for them), the less ethics commissions and officers will have to resort to punishment.
The Calvinistic State of Our Judgment
As Pryor says in her book, "American society is, for all its freedom, a punitive society. We carry a burden of Calvinistic negativeness that colors all our institutions and much of our judgment." Government ethics is one place where it is clear how much Calvinistic negativeness has ruined our judgment. Out in the real world, it seems as if few government ethics discussions shows good judgment on anybody's part.
Government ethics practitioners, and that includes government officials, need to get more creative, and more positive, in how they approach their work. Try positive reinforcement on your pets or your children, and you'll see how much more rewarding it is, for everyone. Then think of the ways it can be applied to the dogged problems of government ethics.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
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