Prison gangs in Iran: Between violence and safety

This article aims to bridge the gap in our knowledge about Iranian prisons and the sociodynamic relations that animate them by illuminating the characteristics and activities of prison gangs in Iran. The interaction between gang affiliation and drug networks, security and violence will be discussed in detail. The in-depth qualitative research, which is informed by grounded theory, serves as the first academic study of gangs in Iranian prisons. Research participants included 38 males and 52 females aged 10–65 years. They were recruited in several different settings, both governmental and non-governmental organizations. The study employed theoretical sampling and in-depth, semi-structured interviewing. Results show that gang-affiliated inmates in Iranian prisons gain monopoly over the drugs market inside prison networks, which leads to inevitable extortion of both prisoners and correctional officers. Gang affiliation blurs the lines between violence and safety, while providing a sense of identity, belonging and financial and emotional support. Prison gang membership also offers some benefits to prisoners and staff, as their existence underpins an informal social order that can be used to govern prisoners. The article discusses this less well-known and unexplored dimension of the topic.

Property rights’ emergence in illicit drug markets

Governance rules are efficient mechanisms in the sense that they increase people’s welfare. They emerge even when the state is unable or refuses to create and enforce them. We study a situation in which this demand for governance manifests itself through the emergence of property rights in illicit drug markets: a privately-provided governance. Specifically, we propose a model for property rights emergence in illicit drug markets as predicted by the theory on governance provided by prison gangs. It is studied a situation in which an agreement among criminals, resembling property rights enforceability on its allocative effect, can emerge in illicit drug markets. Our Mechanism Design approach shows that a change inside the prison system, from a competitive environment to the hegemony of a group of criminals, implies the equilibrium in illicit markets to shift from warfare to peace: the hegemonic group is shown to desire to promote the collusive agreement when it is able to do so. This contrasts with the equilibrium under no hegemony, in which the possibility to conquer consumers/territories drives violence up to a positive level. The novel empirical perspective implied by the model is explored using data from Brazil, a context for which the theory of governance provided by prison gangs has been pointed as a key explanation.

Prison Gangs

Prison gangs are often formally referred to as “security threat groups” or “disruptive groups.” Compared to street gangs, they are understudied criminal organizations. As is the case with many organized criminal groups, official definitions of prison gangs tend to be broad, typically defining one as any group of three or more people who engage in disruptive behavior in a carceral setting. Many prison gangs, however, have other, distinct characteristics, such as having formed or matured in adult prisons, being composed primarily of adults, having a clear organizational structure that allows the gang to persist, and having a presence both in and out of prison. Research on prison gangs has been sporadic and focuses primarily, though not exclusively, on the United States. The first studies of inmate life occurred in the 1940s and 1950s, and in prisons that did not have modern incarnations of prison gangs. Until the 1980s, only a few academics described the existence of prison gangs or, their precursor, cliques. The 1980s and early 1990s saw the first studies of prison gangs, notably Camp and Camp’s historical study of prison gangs within the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s and Fong and Buentello’s work that documented the foundation and evolution of prison gangs in the Texas prison system in the 1980s. These studies marked some of the first, and last, significant, systematic studies of prison gangs until the new century. The 21st century brought renewed attention to security threat groups, as scholars from a variety of disciplines, including sociology, criminology, and economics, engaged in the study of prison society and how inmate groups influence it. Some of these scholars introduced new methodologies to the study of prison gangs, thereby significantly increasing the available knowledge on these groups. Research on prison gangs has expanded to consider four broad categories: defining prison gangs and describing their formation and evolution; evaluating prison gangs’ organizational structure and governance in carceral and free settings; assessing the role of prison gangs on reoffending; and gauging how to control prison gangs both in and out of prison.

Small Populations

Chapter 5 examines the history of California’s women’s prisons. Women’s prisons have never been home to prison gangs like those found in some men’s prisons; norms are used instead to govern social and economic interactions. Some women also form fictive kinships, taking on roles as the mom, dad, and child. This chapter shows that decentralized social order operates because women’s prisons have always held relatively few prisoners. In such small populations, gossip, ostracism, and shaming work effectively, and at low cost, to punish bad behavior, and female prisoners have never had to invest in the costly, centralized institutions that men often turn to.

Social Networks

Chapter 6 considers men’s prisons in England, which rely on decentralized institutions to govern social and economic life. Prisoners affiliate with people from their hometowns and sometimes even the same housing estates. They do not rely on organized, racially segregated prison gangs, like those found in many U.S. men’s prisons. Instead, because of the small size of prisons and pre-existing social networks, norm-based governance works effectively. This chapter examines studies from maximum- and medium-security prisons to test these claims. The governance theory explains why there is less racial segregation, few to no prison gangs, and less violent harassment of sex offenders.

A Gang of Pentecostals

This article uses ethnographic data from two of Rio de Janeiro’s inmate-led prison churches to examine how they function. It also highlights the structural and functional parallels of these churches with prison gangs. I argue that the gang-like characteristics of these churches are an important reason for the success of Pentecostalism inside Rio de Janeiro’s penal system. The results of this research can inform future scholarly investigation and prison ministry initiatives.