When inmates make the rules (and enforce them): democracy in self-governing prisons

What happens when a state fails to run its prisons? David Skarbek and Courtney Michaluk examine the phenomenon of prison self-governance – when inmates are locked up but left to their own devices. In some jails in Latin America, prisoners establish their own governing bodies to keep order, sometimes even setting up extralegal courts of their own. Even in California, understaffing means that gangs determine much of everyday prison life.