This week on the Lectures and History podcast, University of Southern California

sociology assistant professor Brittany Friedman explores the history and evolution of prison gangs,

going back to the mid-20th century.

Before then, American prisons saw little in the way of organized

gang structure. Violence and crime behind bars were primarily isolated incidents rather than coordinated

efforts. But over time, informal alliances, often based on race, ethnicity or geography,

laid the groundwork for the highly structured gangs that would follow. Professor

Friedman is the author of Carceral apartheid, how lies and white supremacists run our prisons.

Hi, everyone. I'm very happy to see you today. So, as you can see, the topic of my lecture today is the history of American prison gangs.

And this is a topic that I very much love to teach. It's very important. And as you will see,

our state of California plays a very important role. So prison gangs have arguably captured the American imagination for almost eight decades.

That is almost 80 years.

We have been fascinated in a variety of ways with prison gangs, whether it be as scholars

as we are today, or in movies,

in memoirs. And so what the state labels as prison gangs, and you'll see why I'm putting that

in quotes, are actually prisoner organizations with a hierarchical pyramid-like structure,

typically seen in militaries.

We see this same structure in mafias and rebel armies,

and also other types of armed groups.

And so, like other groups,

prisoner organizations are born from politics.

And this is very important as we're going to see.

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