ABSTRACT
Prison gangs have radically changed the dynamics of the United States penal system. The emergence of prison gangs was far from peaceful. Gangs have been responsible for most cases of serious misconduct in jails, such as inmate assault, staff intimidation, sexual misbehavior, and drug trafficking. Prison gangs can also be understood through such a lens. Social coordination in gangs is often achieved with a community responsibility system (CRS). This institutional device was first employed by merchants in the late medieval period in Europe, and it comprises a system where the whole community is responsible for the actions and debts of their individual members. Before prison gangs and the community responsibility system, the main source of inmate governance in California was a set of informal norms known as "the convict code". Testing causal mechanisms in a range of prison gangs could help scholars isolate the necessary and sufficient conditions for gang formation and development.
