Taking into account the social consequences caused by imprisonment, prisons and other total institutions cannot be considered only as formal institutions and analysed only within a formal approach. Such a formal and legal approach is too simplistic. In modern states, the prison is the most important tool of social control combined with coercion. It continues to be part of the political, social, economic, and moral order.
Traditional criminological and sociological approaches to the study of the phenomenon of incarceration, a component of which is the existence of a prison subculture and an informal hierarchy of prisoners, are based on the study of values, norms and elements of the social structure (social roles, statuses, groups, etc.). However, at the center of the author’s approach is the thesis that torture and inhuman treatment are an objective element of modern political relations, an integral component of power relations, and at the same time a product of the spread of panoptic discipline in the society of the 21st century.
Within the framework of the traditional view on the structure of relations in total institutions, two different cultural and social worlds (prison officers and prisoners) develop independently of each other and have contacts only on formally defined grounds.
However, in the context of this study, it should be emphasized: subcultural confrontation in prisons not only does not exclude agreements between two social groups. On the contrary, subcultural confrontation at the same time involves parallel cooperation for obtaining maximum profits by both social groups, the consequence of which is the creation and maintenance of an atmosphere of total violence in prisons.
It is possible to make, as at first glance, a controversial conclusion: the phenomenon of the prison subculture – at least in its modern manifestations – is not at all or mostly related to the subculture as such. It is, first of all, about an organized system of repressive power and at the same time a mechanism for extorting material values from representatives of the middle and lower castes of the prison hierarchy. The organized system of repressive power and, at the same time, the mechanism of extortion of material values are disguised as a simulacrum of the prison subculture.
In the 21st century, the informal prison hierarchy is a fact that is recognized by the authorities of all states where such a subculture acquires significant manifestations and significantly affects a free society.
Prison subculture does not exist by itself. It exists within the limits of a cruel and rigid caste system, which is also directly recognized by the governments of many European countries.
Prison subculture and the associated caste system do not exist in a vacuum, apart from the state and its agents. Moreover, the prison subculture and the corresponding caste system in a particular prison and at the level of the entire national prison system are the results of a contract between the upper castes of the informal prisoners’ organization and agents of the state.
The external symbols of the prison subculture and the informal hierarchy of prisoners only mask the true nature of this phenomenon, which is aimed at the organized and permanent extortion of material values from prisoners by representatives of the upper castes, which takes place with the direct assistance of the administration of penitentiary institutions, which, in the end, is the ultimate beneficiary of such illegal distribution of material resources.
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