Book Review: Competing for Control: Gangs and the Social Order of Prisons
| Author | Dev R Maitra |
| Position | Lecturer in Criminology, University Of Suffolk |
| Pages | 103-108 |
103
British Journal of Community Justice
©2020 Manchester Metropolitan University
ISSN 1475-0279
Vol. 16 (2) 103–108
BOOK REVIEW
Competing for Control: Gangs and the Social Order of Prisons
Pyrooz, D. , Decker, H. (2019); 310pp, (pbk), (£26.58) Cambridge University Press; ISBN-
10:1108735746
In Competing for Control: Gangs and the Social Order of Prisons, David Pyrooz and Scott
Decker present a comprehensive academic analysis of prison gangs in the United States.
The text is based on their ‘Lonestar Project’ – a longitudinal study looking at several
aspects of prison gang membership, prison gang member characteristics and re-entry. The
book provides a wealth of data on this timely and contemporary area of study.
Foundation for the Study
The book is divided into ten chapters and covers a wide range of data on prison gang
members in the Texan penitentiary system. For those who are not familiar with Pyrooz and
Decker’s Lonestar Project, which forms the basis of this book, readers are helpfully directed
to the project’s inception and its details: “we embarked on the largest study of prison gang
members conducted to date in the United States. We interviewed a cohort of 802 male gang
and non-gang members prior to their release from Texan prisons” (p.21). This explanation
is provided in Chapter 1, titled ‘Foundation for the Study’, which situates the project and
provides background information to introduce its themes to the reader. Although explicitly
an American study, the authors make references to the wider, global discussions on prison
gangs, and the wider debate around mass-incarceration in the United States. Similarly, in
this first chapter, Pyrooz and Howell refer to gang statistics across the United States, in
relation to the growth of both street and prison gangs in each decade of the twentieth
century (p.10-11).
The Theoretical framework
Chapter 2 then provides a theoretical framework for the book; this chapter is particularly
instructive, as it presents detailed theory, drawing on seminal penological studies from
throughout the twentieth century. Particular attention is given towards David Skarbeck’s
work on social order and gang-led governance in prisons, something the authors later
return to. Indeed, from the outset, Pyrooz and Decker are candid in acknowledging the
limitations of their work, highlighting that it presents the findings of an in-depth study of
prison gangs in one American state, rather than a more general account of prison gangs
throughou t the United States or interna tionally. The auth ors also, for example, draw
attention to the fact that their Lonestar Project only focused on men’s prisons and that,
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