“Anyone who has spent time in prison – as a staff member, incarcerated person, sociologist, or simply as a visitor – has no doubt about the fact that it is an environment profoundly controlled by rules”, asserts Luca Sterchele, a sociologist of law and prison studies at the University of Milan (Italy). Detention is built on a set of rules that regulate every moment, “down to the most trivial actions”.

“You have the law, then below that is the correctional code, and below that are memos… and each facility has its own rules and regulations”, summarises Damien Rameau, a prison guard and member of the French union SNEPAP-FSU.

National laws, European and international standards, and correctional codes broadly define the basic rights of incarcerated people: exercise, correspondence, maintaining family ties, hygiene and access to treatment. However, in practice, administrative standards are what determine how these rights can be exercised.

 Circulars, instructions and memos regulate all aspects of life in detention, from which objects are allowed in cells to the clothes that friends and relatives can bring, as well as shower schedules and the conditions of access for the visitation area. They also determine the disciplinary regime: what is considered misconduct and what the potential punishments are.

For this system to operate, certain people – members of management, the medical staff, and the surveillance staff – are delegated authority by the law. They are the ones who decide to open doors, authorise movements and approve administrative formalities. This authority is in no way a personal or informal strength but rather an institutional power delegated by the law.

In prison, nothing occurs without the authorisation of those in a position of authority, the prison staff. “Imagine that you locked a person up in a 15-square-metre bathroom and the only way for them to interact or even to go take a shower is if a guard opens the door for them”, illustrates Damien Rameau. “The incarcerated person cannot do anything without their intervention.”

This physical dependency is accompanied by a financial dependency. Georges, incarcerated in Switzerland, shares his experience: “From eleven o’clock till noon, I watch TV, which costs me a euro a day. If no one […] puts money in my account, there’s no more TV time because it’s practically impossible to work: there are too few jobs”. The same is true for the telephone: authorising a call requires several administrative approvals. “Access has to be unblocked, the authorised numbers have to be entered, and it has to be confirmed that the person can call. And since they are payphones, someone has to add credit to the account”, explains Damien Rameau.

Security issues justify constant intervention in everyday life. In Spain, in 2025, the Ministry of the Interior forbid all incarcerated people from wearing “black, dark blue or similar” clothing, illustrating how the prison service exercises its power down to the smallest details.

 “Let’s be clear: incarcerated people are not free in any way; they are always dependent on the administration”, summarises Damien Rameau.

It therefore seems surprising that the popular assumption that incarcerated people “call the shots” persists. In Italy, Luca Sterchele explains that this image is associated with large criminal organisations: “Many people think that these groups control the dynamics on the inside”, despite this no longer being the least bit true. The same goes for France, where people think that drug traffickers have the ability to mobilise a network outside of prison and threaten the safety of the prison staff, despite only representing “1 or 2% of the prison population”, estimates Damien Rameau.

These representations and this rhetoric do not so much reflect an objective reality as a perception of power inspired by isolated, often overhyped by the media, experiences. The sociologist Luca Sterchele also understands that this perception emerged among guards in Italy as the result of incidents “where members of staff were charged for acts of torture. They then started to say that the power dynamic had been reversed and that now the incarcerated people decided everything.”

However, another significant aspect of prison operations cannot be ignored: in addition to the official standards, life in prison is also structured around informal negotiations, grey areas and spaces of interdependence.

Luca Sterchele explains:

 “Daily life in prison cannot be reduced to the statutory provisions that regulate it. On the contrary, it constantly strays from them. It could be called a ‘prison code’: an unofficial, unwritten, regulatory system embodied by all the stakeholders within prison”.

These unofficial standards, observes Didier Fassin, a French sociologist and doctor, help maintain some kind of social harmony in detention, where the strict application of the official standards could be a source of tension. He explains in his book Prison Worlds: “Order in prison can only exist on the condition that a certain flexibility remains possible, that officers are open to discussions, negotiations and concessions […] ‘Little arrangements’ are essential for peace in detention”.

Damien Rameau makes the same observation: “[The law] forbids transferring items in detention. If one incarcerated person doesn’t have any tobacco leaves for his cigarette, the surveillance officers must choose: go grab a leaf from another cell to defuse the situation or do nothing. If they respect the law and don’t make the transfer, it could create tension. If they do make the transfer, they risk being blamed if something happens”.

The unofficial standards do not only regulate the relationships between the prison staff and incarcerated people – they also structure the authority dynamics within these two groups.

With regards to the prison staff, Luca Sterchele observes “informal hierarchies, in which lower-ranking members of staff do not recognise the authority of officials perceived to be too focused on procedure and demonstrating too much loyalty to the law. These members prefer to rely on practical suggestions from coworkers with more seniority who are comfortable with the informal guidelines”.

This reasoning appears clearly in a sociological study carried out by Corinne Rostaing in France: although 71% of guards in training choose to write an incident report in the event of conflict, only 38% make the same choice after one year, while the other 62% prefer at that point to resolve conflicts informally, one on one.

 Luca Sterchele recalls in particular the example of a young woman who was assigned for the first time to the management team of a men’s prison. “She introduced strict limits and further clarified what qualified as a lawful use of force. The prison staff at the facility then adopted micro-strategies of autonomous action to counter her orders. The situation worsened until it eventually led to her transfer elsewhere”.

Informal codes and a hierarchy of authority also exist among incarcerated people. They are particularly visible in the spaces where the prison staff remains in the background. There are several explanations for this: certain places, such as cells, represent private spaces, and other areas, such as the library or certain workshops, are designed to allow incarcerated people to operate autonomously. Damien Rameau notes, however, that “these spaces are increasingly restricted”.

Structural constraints such as overcrowding or personnel shortages can also limit staff response capacity. In the exercise yards, for example, staff members may not have sufficient numbers to be able to take action, even when conflicts arise.

In the spaces where staff are absent, the positions of power are redistributed among incarcerated people. “Various levels of authority exist between the groups, but also within each of them”, observes Luca Sterchele. “Incarcerated individuals do not form a homogeneous group: they are divided along lines of race, class and structural inequalities. The processes of social marginalisation that occur on the outside are imported, replicated and reinforced inside prisons”.

 The sociologist Leïla Delannoy Aissaouï, meanwhile, refers to the “warrior ethos” to describe the power dynamics between incarcerated people. This concept helps explain how, in a violent and competitive environment, each person leverages their resources – physical, psychological, interpersonal – to secure a place in the hierarchy and guarantee their safety.

Damien Rameau also underscores that incarcerated people play a role to get by. “There is no simple notion of good and evil; it’s a grey area”.

Luca Sterchele’s response to this question is “first and foremost, the prison service”. Governance in prison, he says, is based on the “carrot and stick” logic. The law defines the eligibility criteria for certain rights such as activities, employment or sentence adjustments, but how they are applied also depends on unofficial assessments, leaving the staff with significant room to manoeuvre.

An incarcerated person who is considered “reliable” and respects the implicit codes of the facility will be in a better position to be given flexibility or special arrangements. These unwritten codes may include, for example, not challenging a decision in public or even speaking to staff in a manner deemed respectful, polite or pleasant.

 Consequently, the people with financial, social or cultural resources navigate this environment more easily. Dragos, who was previously imprisoned in Hungary and is now President of the Liga Detinutilor, an organisation that supports incarcerated people, notes: “Your personality really helps you get by”.

This can range from spending a few more minutes with your loved ones or in the shower, to getting staff to “look the other way” about cannabis consumption or avoiding an incident report. The sympathy or, in contrast, the hostility of a staff member towards an incarcerated person can play a deciding role in the application of sanctions or access to rights.

Nevertheless, even the incarcerated people perceived as “reliable” or “influential” cannot escape institutional power. “How would it benefit them to claim they’re in command?” asks Damien Rameau. “Whatever happens, if the surveillance officer decides not to open the cell door, he does not open it. Incarcerated people would even lose on two fronts: concerning life in detention and in penal terms”.

For a considerable number of incarcerated people, the tacit rules of docility, for example, can represent an obstacle to accessing their basic rights. John McGhee, who was previously imprisoned in Scotland, says, “I had to fight every day to get what I was entitled to […] I remember one day when I made a request for visitation time to see my family. They drove two and a half hours to Edinburgh only to be denied entry. A guard had thrown away the form because of a disagreement three weeks earlier”. When the application of the law depends on the goodwill of staff, it becomes something to be negotiated or earned.

 “This informal code opens and closes pathways to rights depending on an incarcerated person’s ability to adhere to it”, points out Luca Sterchele. “And when the application of a right is dependent on other rules or behaviours, it is no longer a right but a privilege”.

These informal standards are not neutral: they also reflect the perceptions and prejudices of the prison staff. Luca Sterchele describes a process of racial discrimination in Italian prisons, in which certain incarcerated people are perceived by the prison staff as automatically suspicious. “There is a very widespread image of the incarcerated North African who is supposedly a cunning pretender, always faking pain to curry favour. This perception affects their access to care, as each request is eyed with suspicion and may even be rejected for this reason”. He adds: “These practices are normalised, seen as ‘the way things work’, which makes them exceedingly difficult to challenge”. In addition, the means of recourse are difficult for imprisoned people to access and rarely come to a successful conclusion.

“Everyone produces the standards in prison. The real question is who has the power to enforce them and against whom. Certain incarcerated people can impose rules on others, but certainly not on the institution or the staff”, concludes Luca Sterchele. “The everyday reality of prison constantly demonstrates that the power dynamics are very solid, without a real threat to the institutional power structure”.

 Although these unofficial standards – alongside the official standards – shape the power dynamics in prison, they never result in a transfer of authority from the staff to the incarcerated people.

The structure of carceral power is far from being destabilised: it remains intact, and incarcerated people remain at the bottom of the hierarchy.