ALSA 2025 meeting

This article examines inmate hierarchies in a large-scale women’s prison in China, both the formal hierarchy imposed by prison officers and the informal status hierarchy that emerges spontaneously among inmates. It investigates the legitimacy of the formal hierarchy and the interactions between formal and informal hierarchies, arguing that the formal hierarchy retains legitimacy when it aligns with the informal but loses legitimacy when the two systems conflict. Tension between the two systems lead to a loss of inmate confidence in the formal hierarchy and creates a feeling of unfairness and frustration within inmate society. An illegitimate formal hierarchy fosters feelings of unfairness among inmates and erodes their confidence in prison authority. Drawing on empirical data from field observations and 75 semi-structured interviews (41 inmates and 34 frontline prison officers), this research advances the study of social organization in women’s prisons in a non-Western context.
Keywords: social hierarchy, inmate code, legitimacy, women’s prison, China