The changing social organization of prison protection markets: when prisoners choose to organize horizontally rather than vertically

Abstract

This article revisits the framework which Buentello et al. (Prison J 71(2): 3-14, 1991) created to describe the development of inmate solidarity groups into prison gangs in the Texas Department of Corrections. Interviews with current and former prison gang members in Texas, Arizona, and Illinois augment the current published literature on prison gangs in California. This article argues that the responses which prison administrations make to prisoners' social orders are not static and have, in some cases, caused vertically configured groups to evolve into horizontally configured groups. These structural changes in prison gangs affect the gangs' ability to affect control in the criminal underworld outside prison. Accordingly, although the challenges which prison administrations present to vertically developed social orders within prison may improve the administrations' control within the prison walls, they may effectively decrease criminal-led social control on the street, leading to an increase in street-level violence.

Gang Affiliation and Prisoner Reentry: Discrete-Time Variation in Recidivism by Current, Former, and Non-Gang Status

“…These data offer a number of advantages when examining the gang status-recidivism link. The novelty of these data is beneficial because they were collected while the custodial population remains near an all-time high (Bronson and Carson 2019) and gangs are believed to have fractured and become more decentralized (Gundur 2018). They also offer a stronger test by controlling for measures from a survey rather than official records (Dooley et al 2014:267, 270).…”

Minority gangs in Singapore prisons: Prisonisation revisited

“…Drawing on the Buentello et al. (1991) gang development model, Gundur (2018, 2019) elaborates that the genesis of prison gangs begins with in-prison solidarity groups primarily providing intimate support, which then advance into codified collective behaviours that ultimately evolve into ‘protection groups’ followed by ‘predator groups’ before becoming full-fledged gangs. In drawing upon Barrio Azteca , a Hispanic gang based in Texas, USA, as case study, Gundur (2019) finds that tactical decisions along with specific market demands enable the prolonged survival of the prison gang into organized criminal organizations in the free world.…”

“…Vertically organized groups like Barrio Azteca, Gundur (2018) notes, with its extensive prison networks and strong authority and control within the prison had deeper interests to establish itself in the free world as organized criminal organizations that enabled its released members to manage and partake in the share of other criminal enterprises.…”

“…This paper offers a nexus between the importation-deprivation models and the more recent emphasis on the emergence of prison gangs within prisons into organized criminal enterprises (Gundur, 2018, 2019; Skarbek, 2012, 2014) by drawing on the organizational trajectory of a racial minority gang in Singapore, Omega, as case study. In particular, the paper argues that the experiences, ideologies and orientation of Omega, a gang formed in prison, are qualitatively distinct from those of the majority Chinese inmates where experiences of racialisation and the attendant narratives of social exclusion, subjugation, racism, and discrimination have a pervasive effect on constructing intra-minority and minority-majority relationships in the prison context.…”

“…In fact, there are strong parallels especially between Barrio Azteca and Omega where both had initially been formed, along racial lines, to resist other predatory groups in prisons before becoming one themselves and later transforming into an established organised crime group on the outside. Gundur’s (2018) study of the organizational development of the Barrio Azteca prison gang in the Texas penitentiary system where he synthesized and applied two evolutionary typologies – the theoretical model of inmate development posited by Buentello, Fong, and Vogel, (1991), and the five-stage empirical model of inmate group development offered by Lester, Parnell, and Carraher (2003) – is instructive to understanding the similar evolutionary trajectory of the Omega gang. Organisationally, as Fleisher and Decker (2001) note, prison gangs have a structure usually with one person elected or designated as the leader who oversees a council of members and make decisions on behalf of the gang.…”