When Officials Govern
3 shows how in Nordic counties, prison officials provide significantly more resources, more competent administration, and higher-quality governance than is found in Latin American prisons. As a result, prisoners have few reasons to spend time, energy, and resources on providing these same goods and services. The chapter goes on to show that there are few prisoner-created organizations with relatively little influence on the everyday life of prisoners, and social norms are the predominant governance mechanism in place as small prison populations make gossip and ostracism powerful tools for punishing bad behavior. Even in the sphere of illegal drug use, prisoners do not use markets to coordinate the use of resources, relying instead on a system of sharing.