The Economics of Prison Gangs

A very interesting Atlantic
article about prison gangs devotes a lot of attention to the
work of David Skarbek, a graduate of George Mason’s economics
program who now teaches at King’s College London. Here are some
excerpts:

“Prison
is set up so that most of the things a person wants to do are
against the rules,” Skarbek says. “So to understand what’s really
going on, you have to start by realizing that people are coming up
with complicated ways to get around them.” Prison officials have
long known that gangs are highly sophisticated organizations with
carefully plotted strategies, business-development plans,
bureaucracies, and even human-resources departments—all of which,
Skarbek argues, lead not to chaos in the prison system but to
order….

Prison, Skarbek claims, is the ultimate challenge for a
rational-choice theorist: a place where control of the economic
actors is nearly total, and where virtually any transaction
requires the consent of the authorities. The Soviets had far less
control over their people’s economic activity than prison wardens
do over the few dollars available for prisoners’ commissary
purchases. Both settings have given rise to alternate currencies
and hidden markets. Most famously, cigarettes have become the
medium of exchange in many prisons. But when they are banned, other
currencies take their place. California inmates now use postage
stamps….

What’s astonishing to outsiders, Skarbek says, is
that many aspects of gang politics that appear to be sources of
unresolvable hatred immediately dissipate if they threaten the
stability of prison society. For example, consider the Aryan
Brotherhood—a notoriously brutal organization whose members are
often kept alone in cells because they tend to murder their cell
mates. You can take the Brotherhood at its word when it declares
itself a racist organization, and you can do the same with the
Black Guerrilla Family, which preaches race war and calls for the
violent overthrow of the government. But Skarbek says that at
lights-out in some prisons, the leader of each gang will call out
good night to his entire cellblock. The sole purpose of this
exercise is for each gang leader to guarantee that his men will
respect the night’s silence. If a white guy starts yelling and
keeps everyone awake, the Aryan Brothers will discipline him to
avoid having blacks or Hispanics attack one of their members. White
power is one thing, but the need to keep order and get shut-eye is
paramount.

There’s much more, including an argument that “prison gangs are
the courts and sheriffs for people whose business is too shady to
be able to count on justice from the usual sources.” Read the rest

here. Buy Skarbek’s book The Social Order of the
Underworld here. See
him describe the world’s freest prison here. Peruse Reason‘s
special incarceration issue here.