Prison gangs: Re-examining their existence, reframing their function

This chapter considers prison gangs by outlining definitional challenges that concern this social phenomenon before examining the importance of accounting for the specifics of prison environments. It presents a social eco-system approach to understanding prison gangs and, in doing so, accounts for theories of importation, strain and deprivation, incorporating these into a proposed Gang Social-Ecosystem Model. The chapter draws to a close by challenging the more pejorative approach to defining and understanding gangs, particularly in prisons. The development of prison gangs remains poorly understood, with research limited, descriptive and largely atheoretical. There is a need to avoid focus on myths concerning development and to concentrate more on the specifics of the environment and the role of direct importation and adaption/deprivation. There is increasing acceptance, both empirically and theoretically, that prisoners become involved in challenging behaviours because of an interaction between what they bring with them to the environment and the environment itself.