Can you elaborate?

during the 70s and 80s, there was a huge influx in american prisoners due to the war on drugs and more severe sentencing that followed the surge in crime beginning the 60s. the old prison culture was organized around severe methods like the one described in this essay, and small groups of prisoners who tended to keep each other in line following a 'convict code' of behavioral norms and a system of seniority. the surge in population, especially of men who were younger than the old timers who previously made up the bulk of the long-term population (sentences tended to be much shorter than they are now), threw the situation into chaos. reciprocal violence, petty predation and prison riots suddenly exploded.

the old system broke down because the guards and older inmates could no longer effectively keep the new prisoners in line. the power vacuum was eventually filled by the race-based gangs we know today, which stepped in to effectively provide governance where the state was no longer able to. the massive availability of drugs provided them with a business model and incentive for creating stability among the other prisoners, enforced by ruthless violence where necessary.

it's still this way today in american prisons. the state of course formally controls the facility, but the gangs exert extraordinary power underneath the surface, over the relations and arrangements that aren't legible to the administration. i'm not making any normative claims about which arrangement was better, but it's a pretty interesting story. i'm giving a very brief summary of what i read in this book:

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=A6D69CBF4ADEEA046A4...

Very interesting - thanks for the info!