Positive reinforcement prison

Positive reinforcement prisons are devices from the IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family

Then Prowl left his son to die in Kandor's crater.

The positive reinforcement prison is a subtle yet effective means of incapacitating captured enemies: a device designed to keep its target docile by continually feeding them a simulation of their greatest desires.

Fiction

IDW Generation 1 continuity

Positive reinforcement prisons were among the many wartime innovations developed by Prowl and Mesothulas in the early days of the Great War. It never got off the ground; Prowl believed that by giving its prisoners exactly what they wanted, the device wasn't much of a punishment. Instead, the two went on to develop spark extraction, which became the primary method by which Autobots detained criminals and prisoners of war.

Millions of years later, Mesothulas—now calling himself Tarantulasb—riefly imprisoned Prowl in a positive reinforcement prison while he webbed up his old colleague. In his artificially-induced simulation, Prowl experienced a dream of a utopian postwar Cybertron where Optimus Prime personally thanked him for his pragmatism and told Prowl that he was right all along. The dream was cut short when Tarantulas disconnected Prowl from the prison, and teased him for questioning its effectiveness. Sins of the Wreckers #2