Abstract
A perennial problem in studying penal communities is one of access. The penal world is still mostly a hidden world. MSNBC’s “Lockup” and National Geographic’s “Lockdown” provide glimpses inside prisons, but for the academic researcher, Institutional Review Boards and a labyrinth of legal checks deny admission and thwart potential ethnographies of penal living. Further, there is no set of longitudinal data from which a meaningful understanding of inmate life can be gained. Thus, the researcher interested in mass incarceration from the viewpoint of inmates must rely upon personal accounts of former inmates and correctional officers, documentaries, disparate legal documents, diverse surveys, and reports from the occasional heroic journalist. The historiographical synthesis of such variegated data sources into a coherent argument about inmate social systems is a Herculean task, and David Skarbek is to be commended for performing that task in The Social Order of the Underworld.
Skarbek’s principal argument is that the permanence of penal gangs stems from their functions as governing organizations for an increasingly large and diverse population of men who otherwise lack the mechanisms for regulating behavior. In his “governance theory of prison order”, Skarbek convincingly states that stability is a byproduct of rational, profit-seeking prison gangs whose primary interests lie in bourgeoning illicit drug markets. He carefully delineates the problematics of establishing trust, fairness, and property rights; of settling disputes; and of enforcement. He then systematically explains how each of these issues is addressed by penal gangs operating in the “community responsibility system” whereby market transactions are facilitated by the reputations of the prison gangs from which trade parties represent. Consequently, inmates can be sure that their grievances will be heard and properly adjudicated—albeit by prison gang leadership. Thus, order is maintained in California prisons because it is profitable for prison gangs to do so. Parenthetically, Chapter 6 is a useful commentary on how Latino prison gangs have extended their profit-seeking efforts to the street, consolidating drug markets inside and beyond prison walls. While Skarbek rejects importation theories for the development of prison gangs, he justly notes the relationship between prison and street gangs, as the former taxes the latter in free society and demands membership in penal society.
A key contribution of The Social Order of the Underworld is the highlighting of the failures of correctional policy and the misguided general thinking regarding prison gangs. Skarbek rightly stops short of suggesting that prison gangs are good just because they are functional; however, from start to finish he underscores the utility of penal gangs (the “supply side” as he says) to underline the futility of efforts to uproot prison gangs without addressing the intrinsic demand for governance. The implications of this shift in thinking are significant. Namely, the work of inmate management could be made easier by concentrating on the human needs of inmates—a refreshing perspective in the current era indeed.
Additionally, this book benefits from the rational choice perspective. That is, Skarbek treats readers to the changing structures of prison gangs in accordance with the practical needs of inmate populations. In doing so, he dispels myths about unbridled brutality and unprovoked violence. There is order within prison populations, and as he skillfully argues, violence is bad for business.
While the Social Order of the Underworld is a well-written piece, carefully argued with a logical development toward a defensible end, there are a few issues worth addressing. First, the title overreaches. Skarbek does not provide a universal theory for understanding penal gangs as governing organizations across the USA. He focuses on two California prison gangs (La Eme and La Nuestra Familia) to the near exclusion of all others. References to other prison gangs (some in Texas) are reduced to anecdotal evidence used to explain the foundations, functions, and organizational structures of La Eme and La Nuestra Familia. On this point, The Social Order of the Underworld is primarily a synthesis of existing literature, and readers familiar with the work of Rebecca Trammell (Skarbek acknowledges borrowing heavily from her), Chris Blatchford’s The Black Hand, Ramon Mendoza’s Mexican Mafia, Robert Morril’s The Mexican Mafia, John Mendoza’s Nuestra Familia, and Nina Fuentes’ The Rise and Fall of the Nuestra Familia will likely find this book less gratifying. The same might be true for those familiar with the work of James Jacobs’ Stateville, Leo Carroll’s Hacks, Blacks, and Cons, and Christian Parenti’s Lockdown America, each of which provides insightful discussions of organizing forces in and outside of prison walls that help to explain the present state of penal gangs. This does not mean that Skarbek has not made a contribution to the literature. He certainly has. His rearticulation of the literature on inmate social systems to present a logically consistent, economic-based explanation of the durability of penal gangs is novel, and it will likely invigorate further research in this area. Not every study of penal societies can lay claim to such victories.
However, these achievements come at a cost. His emphases on the functions of supply and demand suffer the typical drawbacks of rational choice approaches. Conflict, coercion, and constraint in complex settings are replaced with calculated choice. He does not deal seriously with how the threat of violence constrains the average inmate’s choice to be involved in or interact with prison gangs, and after acknowledging that “prison gangs originated to provide protection”, he abandons the significance of status homophily as a mechanism for maintaining penal gangs in favor of the economics of gang membership (p. 47). Additionally, Skarbek leaves unaddressed the role of correctional officers in illicit drug markets. It is difficult to imagine drug markets flourishing in prisons to the extent that Skarbek details without cooperation to one degree or another from correctional officers. A discussion of the role of correctional managers in inmate markets would have been helpful for understanding how drug markets continue unabated.
Finally, Skarbek contends that norms “failed” as governing mechanisms and were subsequently replaced with prison gang organizations. However, the dissolution of an overarching “convict code” is not indicative of normlessness the way he seems to be suggesting. Ethnic groupings were increasingly common during the early 1970s. Certainly, inmates maintained general norms, and more specific ones developed as penal gangs gained ascendancy.
Notwithstanding the above issues, The Social Order of the Underworld is an excellent read with an illuminating analysis. Those unfamiliar with the world of penal gangs and those looking for a refreshing take on the organization of inmate social systems would do well to start with this book. The book’s stated goal is “to understand how criminal institutions form, function, and evolve, and to determine their effectiveness and robustness” (p. 8). On this, Skarbek largely delivers.