Criminal governance in Russian prisons

How is order produced in prisons where formal authority is weak, fragmented or strategically constrained? Drawing on 85 handwritten edicts of the Russian criminal fraternity vory-v-zakone and interviews with former prisoners, this article analyses the production of extra-legal order in Russian penal institutions. We show that the vory-v-zakone constitute a durable, institutionalised and trans-local system of criminal governance that coexists with, and at times supplements or contests, state authority. Their governance relies on reputation, communication networks, coercion and redistributive mechanisms, producing a form of authority that many inmates perceive as more predictable and, paradoxically, more humane than formal prison administration.