Chapter 5 examines the history of California’s women’s prisons. Women’s prisons have never been home to prison gangs like those found in some men’s prisons; norms are used instead to govern social and economic interactions. Some women also form fictive kinships, taking on roles as the mom, dad, and child. This chapter shows that decentralized social order operates because women’s prisons have always held relatively few prisoners. In such small populations, gossip, ostracism, and shaming work effectively, and at low cost, to punish bad behavior, and female prisoners have never had to invest in the costly, centralized institutions that men often turn to.