In this insightful book, David Skarbek builds on his earlier work which shows that official governance institutions are inadequate, prisoners will form their own institutions to secure property rights, facilitate market exchange, adjudicate disputes, and mitigate violence. Skarbek’s work rests at the intersection of two interesting subjects of inquiry. Most obviously, he is contributing to the rapidly growing body of literature on carceral systems. Although The Puzzle of Prison Order is not a work of history, Skarbek answers historian Mary Gibson’s (2011) call for a more global approach to prison studies. Like Peter Leeson’s The Invisible Hook (2009), which looks at the social order of pirates, Skarbek studies the people who seem least likely to establish functional systems of governance—criminals—to show how informal governance institutions form and operate.
Book Review: "The Puzzle of Prison Order: Why Life Behind Bars Varies Around the World"
