Games Prisoners Play
by Marek M. Kaminski · first published 2004
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"On March 11, 1985, a van was pulled over in Warsaw for a routine traffic check that turned out to be anything but routine. Inside was Marek Kaminski, a Warsaw University student who also ran an underground press for Solidarity. The police discovered illegal books in the vehicle, and in a matter of hours, five secret police escorted Kaminski to jail. A sociology and mathematics major one day, Kaminski was the next a political prisoner trying to adjust to a bizarre and dangerous new world. This book represents his attempts to understand that world." "As a coping strategy until he won his freedo
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…says, “you survived in prison by following something called ‘the convict code.’ ” There is a great book by a Polish-American sociologist Marek Kamiński[1] describing the convict code in Polish prisons, Games Prisoners Play[2]. It's based on his personal experience (he ended up in prison as an anticommunist dissident in the 80s) and tries to explain the prison culture from game theory perspective. Which is a fine premise…
on “How Gangs Took Over Prisons” ↗Another one: "Games Prisoners Play: The Tragicomic Worlds of Polish Prison" by Marek Kamiński. Well worth reading – Kamiński is a sociologist who was imprisoned in Poland by the communist regime, and formulated many behaviours of inmates…
on “From pecan pralines to ‘dots’ as currency: how a prison's internal economy works” ↗