Abstract
Building on a semi-ethnographic study in a Ukrainian prison, the first research of its kind in the region, I discuss the normative and governance system of a post-Communist prisoner world. I offer empirical support for Skarbek’s theory of prison social order by demonstrating how prisoner extralegal governance evolves along with the changing structures in and outside the prison to sustain a predictable and tolerable environment within a dehumanising and intrinsically volatile context. Nevertheless, prisoner self-governance, although generally fairly administered, is itself brutal and institutionalises inequality. As the history of prison ‘societies’ in the US and UK demonstrates, far-reaching penal policy changes can radically transform the inner prison world...