The Social Order of the Underworld

2014 Business & Economics

Author : David Skarbek
Release : 2014
Genre : Business & Economics
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 501/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Social Order of the Underworld by : David Skarbek

Download or read book The Social Order of the Underworld written by David Skarbek. This book was released on 2014. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges the widely held view that inmates create prison gangs to promote racism and violence. On the contrary, gangs form to create order. Most people assume that violent inmates left to themselves will descend into a chaotic anarchy, but that's not necessarily the case. This book studies the hidden order of the prison underworld to understand how order arises among outlaws. It uses economics to explore the secret world of the convict culture, inmate hierarchy, and prison gang politics. Inmates engaged in illegal activity cannot rely entirely on state-based governance institutions, such as courts of law and the police, to create order. Correctional officers will not resolve a dispute over a heroin deal gone wrong or help kill a predatory rapist. Yet, the inmate social system is relatively orderly and underground markets flourish. In today's prisons, gangs play a pivotal role in protecting inmates and facilitating illicit commerce. They have sophisticated internal structures and often rely on elaborate written constitutions. To maintain social order, gangs adjudicate conflicts and orchestrate strategic acts of violence to negotiate the competing demands of inmates, gang members, and correctional officers. This book uses economics to explain why prison gangs form, how formal institutions affect them, and why they have a powerful influence even over crime beyond prison walls. Economics explains the seemingly irrational, truly astonishing, and often tragic world of life among the society of captives.

The Puzzle of Prison Order

2020-07-01 Political Science

Author : David Skarbek
Release : 2020-07-01
Genre : Political Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 528/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Puzzle of Prison Order by : David Skarbek

Download or read book The Puzzle of Prison Order written by David Skarbek. This book was released on 2020-07-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people think prisons are all the same-rows of cells filled with violent men who officials rule with an iron fist. Yet, life behind bars varies in incredible ways. In some facilities, prison officials govern with care and attention to prisoners' needs. In others, officials have remarkably little influence on the everyday life of prisoners, sometimes not even providing necessities like food and clean water. Why does prison social order around the world look so remarkably different? In The Puzzle of Prison Order, David Skarbek develops a theory of why prisons and prison life vary so much. He finds that how they're governed-sometimes by the state, and sometimes by the prisoners-matters the most. He investigates life in a wide array of prisons-in Brazil, Bolivia, Norway, a prisoner of war camp, England and Wales, women's prisons in California, and a gay and transgender housing unit in the Los Angeles County Jail-to understand the hierarchy of life on the inside. Drawing on economics and a vast empirical literature on legal systems, Skarbek offers a framework to not only understand why life on the inside varies in such fascinating and novel ways, but also how social order evolves and takes root behind bars.

Vice, Crime, and Poverty

2019-04-16 Social Science

Author : Dominique Kalifa
Release : 2019-04-16
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 269/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Vice, Crime, and Poverty by : Dominique Kalifa

Download or read book Vice, Crime, and Poverty written by Dominique Kalifa. This book was released on 2019-04-16. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beggars, outcasts, urchins, waifs, prostitutes, criminals, convicts, madmen, fallen women, lunatics, degenerates—part reality, part fantasy, these are the grotesque faces that populate the underworld, the dark inverse of our everyday world. Lurking in the mirror that we hold up to our society, they are our counterparts and our doubles, repelling us and yet offering the tantalizing promise of escape. Although these images testify to undeniable social realities, the sordid lower depths make up a symbolic and social imaginary that reflects our fears and anxieties—as well as our desires. In Vice, Crime, and Poverty, Dominique Kalifa traces the untold history of the concept of the underworld and its representations in popular culture. He examines how the myth of the lower depths came into being in nineteenth-century Europe, as biblical figures and Christian traditions were adapted for a world turned upside-down by the era of industrialization, democratization, and mass culture. From the Parisian demimonde to Victorian squalor, from the slums of New York to the sewers of Buenos Aires, Kalifa deciphers the making of an image that has cast an enduring spell on its audience. While the social conditions that created that underworld have changed, Vice, Crime, and Poverty shows that, from social-scientific ideas of the underclass to contemporary cinema and steampunk culture, its shadows continue to haunt us.

The Social Order of the Underworld

2017-07-22

Author : David Skarbek
Release : 2017-07-22
Genre :
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 729/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Social Order of the Underworld by : David Skarbek

Download or read book The Social Order of the Underworld written by David Skarbek. This book was released on 2017-07-22. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System By David Skarbek

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