Prisons as ecosystems of organised and entrepreneurial crime: Developing a theoretical and empirical understanding

Abstract

Despite the burgeoning literature on organised crime in the community, little research has focused on how and to what extent prison environments can nurture and sustain organised crime. In the last decade, the prison has become a key site for organised crime, attracting increased investment in security apparatus and personnel and requiring law enforcement agencies to adopt a greater role in the policing of prisons. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative research conducted in English and Welsh prisons, this article critically analyses the ecology of organised crime within prisons. It explores how prisons can become ‘ecosystems’ conducive to criminal activity and sets out a framework for analysis. It argues that there are five principal contributory factors to a functioning criminal ecosystem in prison: a supply of motivated offenders; suitable consumers and targets; a lack of guardianship; enablers and suitable tools and equipment. This application of the concept of a criminal ecosystem to prisons is not only novel but could also assist in the prevention of organised crime.

Introduction

Although criminological research has analysed prisons as places that are high crime environments (see, for example, Hamm, 2013; Levitt, 1996; Pyrooz and Decker, 2019; Skarbek, 2014, 2020; Van Der Laan, 2012), there is a paucity of research on prisons as settings for organised crime. As Van der Laan (2012: 135) asserts, the main reason for this is that ‘at first glance, the prison would seem to be a prime example of a location with strict supervision, where offenders are separated from potential targets by walls’. However, prisons are places where some inmates continue to offend and where organised crime can continue within the routine activities of prison life (Gooch and Treadwell, 2021, 2023, 2025). The potential role of prisons as places of organised crime was noted in the United States four decades ago (The President of the United States, 1984), but the subject had not been given serious attention by law enforcement and criminal justice agencies in the United Kingdom until very recently (Ministry of Justice, 2019; National Crime Agency, 2017, 2020).

Despite the interest in prison drug markets (see, for example, Cope, 2003; Crewe, 2005; Edgar and O’Donnell, 1998; Gooch and Treadwell, 2020; Norman, 2023; Penfold et al., 2005; Ralphs et al., 2017), surprisingly little research has considered what causes illicit markets – and organised crime – to flourish within prison. The available research has tended to consider why prisoners use particular drugs (Crewe, 2005; Edgar and O’Donnell, 1998), the power and influence of prison drug dealers (Crewe, 2006), or more latterly, the move from heroin to psychoactive substance use (Gooch and Treadwell, 2020; Ralphs et al., 2017). While is clear that drugs have long had a ‘significant presence’ within prison (Crewe, 2005: 477), that presence has grown in the last decade. In 2010 to 2011, there were 3,774 drug ‘finds’ in prison, which increased sixfold to 21,145 by 2024 (Ministry of Justice, 2024). Although such measures of drug use are imperfect and rely on what is found not what is used, the increase in finds cannot all be explained by more effective security tactics or the emergence of a new highly marketable and easily transportable drugs (i.e. psychoactive substances). Rather, there has been a deliberate migration–or ‘transportation’ (Gooch and Treadwell, 2025)–of organised crime into prison. This has enabled a growth in prison drugs markets, with some prisons affected more than others (see, for example, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, 2023b, 2024). Although Varese (2011) notes that the successful migration of organised crime into a new territory requires ‘certain structural conditions’ (p. 12), to date, little research has considered what those structural conditions within prison might be. Drawing on extensive qualitative and ethnographic data conducted in English and Welsh prisons, this article produces a novel theoretical framework for analysing organised crime within prison. In line with broad principles of environmental criminology, it argues that criminal enterprise within prison – specifically organised crime – is more likely to flourish when there are five key factors: motivated offenders, suitable consumers and targets, a lack of guardianship, ‘props’ and equipment, and enablers. By identifying these factors, our findings have the potential to generate new thinking about the prevention of organised crime in prisons.

Theorising organised crime in prisons: Ecosystems of organised crime

Organised crime is an ambiguous concept (Cohen, 1977; Hopkins et al., 2013; Levi, 2012; Wright, 2006) with as many as over 300 different definitions (Von Lampe, 2016). The definition most commonly used is drawn from the United Nations Convention on Transnational Organised Crime (2000), which states:

‘Organized criminal group’ shall mean a structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences established in accordance with this Convention, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit.

Generally, it is acknowledged that organised crime is the structured interaction of actors with a desire for material gain. Understanding how organised crime activity is generated should therefore include an analysis of how the actors are able to conduct such activities over a period of time within particular social and geographical contexts. To this end, Felson (2006) argued that organised crime occurred within an ecosystem. He noted that much criminal cooperation takes place within the everyday routine activities of ordinary life and the analysis of crime events can help us to understand both how such routines support crime and which actors play a part in the system. Indeed, Felson was critical of research that had become too obsessed with understanding the structures and composition of organised crime groups and argued that more analysis was required of the ‘acts of organised crime’ rather than of ‘criminal groups/organisations’. Advancing Felson’s theory, Alvarez and Rodriguez (2018) analysed transnational organised crime as it converges in Columbia. They considered ecosystems to be ‘distinctive and recognizable’ communities that sustain a species where ‘vital processes are interrelated in order to maintain functionality’ (Alvarez and Rodriguez, 2018: 5). In relation to criminal networks, Alvarez and Rodriguez (2018) argued ecosystems develop that involve actors operating outside of the law and civilian populations and converging in spaces, with the two often forming close relationships.

These theoretical developments offer a useful framework for analysing how organised criminal ecosystems might operate in prison and understanding what the main components of the ecosystem are. To that end it is also worth drawing upon routine activity theory (Cohen and Felson, 1979)–a framework developed to analyse and understand crime trends and patterns. Cohen and Felson (1979) initially developed the theory to analyse longitudinal crime patterns in the United States, asserting that crime events occur when there is an absence of guardianship and a convergence of a motivated offender and a suitable target in time and space. Thus, what Cohen and Felson (1979) described are the individual components of an ecosystem that sustains crime over a period of time (offenders, targets, lack of guardianship, convergence in space and time). Other important features of what Felson and Boba (2010: 25) refer to as the ‘chemistry for crime’ are ‘props that help facilitate crime’ (such as weapons), ‘camouflage that may help an offender avoid unwanted notice’, and ‘an audience that the offender wants either to impress or to intimidate’.

Aspects of Cohen and Felson’s framework have been applied to prison settings. For example, in their study of organised crime in Brazilian prisons, Dias and Salla (2013) observe that three main types of criminal groups (motivated offenders) exist in prison: (1) those that develop from anew within prison settings, (2) those that might have existed in the outside world pre-prison and are imported into the prison environment, and (3) those that operate outside of the prison, but are run by criminal entrepreneurs from within prison. Furthermore, in her work related to Dutch prisons, Van der Laan (2012) begins to tease out how criminal networks were able to operate, drawing on a routine activity perspective. The analysis considers how criminal entrepreneurs (motivated offenders) can facilitate organised crime from within prison. The author is clear that there are specific factors about Dutch prison regimes that allow the relationship between entrepreneurs and those on the outside to thrive. It is noted that there are no separate institutions for professional crime entrepreneurs in Holland and generally, the regimes are fairly liberal, with prisoners afforded much time to mix with others and to communicate to the outside world. Thus, guardianship is generally weak, and communication mitigates distance between criminal entrepreneurs and the outside world (such as willing accomplices and suitable targets) – especially with modern communication methods. Indeed, it is also noted that ‘high status’ prisoners in Dutch prisons can attract special privileges (such as prison jobs that further allows facilitation of crime).

Although studies have explored the adaptability of organised crime groups to different environments (Duijn and Sloot, 2015) and the volume and use of mobile phones to facilitate illicit activity (Dierenfeldt et al., 2016; Grommon et al., 2018), Van der Laan ‘s (2012) research is the only attempt to develop a theoretical approach to understanding organised crime in prison. However, the work of Van der Laan (2012) is limited in two main ways. First, the article primarily focuses on crime entrepreneurs who continue to organise criminal acts in the outside world from within prison. Second, the data collection was only based on police intelligence relating to 13 cases that were then supported by visits to prisons and interviews with prison/ law enforcement staff. Although Van der Laan’s framework is a useful starting point, it fails to recognise organised crime as social phenomenon where crime groups take advantage of the legal routine activities that surround them (such as the immediate prison environment) and exploit the relationships that can be forged to become socially embedded (see Van de Bunt et al., 2014).

Despite the absence of research that has successfully analysed organised crime in prisons as an ecosystem, studies have identified aspects of prison environments that promote gang activity. For example, prison officer guardianship, and the extent to which prisoners seek to self-govern or co-govern, has been considered in analyses of prison gangs (Biondi, 2021; Darke, 2018; Pyrooz and Decker, 2019; Skarbek, 2014, 2020; Skarbek and Woltz, 2024). Skarbek (2014) argues that the need to organise illicit markets, coupled with declining guardianship by prison officers and the demise of the inmate code, stimulated the emergence of prison gangs in North American (California) prisons. However, Skarbek concentrates primarily on the absence of governance, and overlooks the ways prison officer authority can not only be absent but also ‘heavy’ (oppressive) or ‘light’ (Crewe et al., 2014), or how these differences influence the nature and degree of the crime and order problem (Sparks et al., 1996; Williams and Liebling, 2023). While Skarbek (2020: 123) notes that there did not appear to be an ‘organised gang presence’ in English prisons, he erroneously concludes that prisoners were not providing ‘extra-legal’ governance in English prisons at all. While Skarbek is correct to point out that gangs do not assume a governance role in English prisons, this does not mean that there is no extra-legal governance at all. Rather, it is the criminal entrepreneurs that are typically performing this role (Gooch and Treadwell, 2023, 2025). Part of the problem is that Skarbek (2014, 2024) too quickly dismisses the importance of importation (Irwin and Cressey, 1962) as an explanatory factor. This is more critical than Skarbek assumes because the relative absence of prison gangs is partly related to the differences in the form and function of English street gangs (the existence of which is contested, see Aldridge et al., 2012; Hallsworth and Young, 2008) and the lack of status and weight attached to ‘gang’ membership in prison (see Gooch, 2025a; Gooch and Treadwell, 2025; Phillips, 2012). The absence of any empirical grounding in Skarbek’s study not only provides a relatively abstract (and at times erroneous) theorisation of the forms of prisoner governance, but also fails to capture the wider ecological variables that might also influence entrepreneurial crime or need to sit alongside ineffective guardianship for an illicit market to flourish.

Methodology

This article draws on qualitative and ethnographic research conducted from October 2014 to July 2023 across nine prisons (including a Category A prison, two Category B Local prisons, two Category C prisons, a Category C prison for sex offenders, a young offender institution (YOI) and a dual function Category C and YOI). Before embarking on the research, University ethical approval was secured, as was the permission of the National Research Committee of HM Prison and Probation Service. As part of that research, we recorded ethnographic observations, conducted semi-structured interviews (including 476 prisoners and 235 prison staff), and analysed management information (including security intelligence and incident reports). As far as possible, we sought to immerse ourselves in daily prison life, not only spending regular time on each wing but also visiting other parts of the prison (e.g. segregation, the gym, the workshops, education, healthcare, and any specialist units). To gain a holistic view, and where consent was given, we also attended adjudications, safety meetings (including or Assesment, Care in Custody and Treatment (‘ACCT’) reviews for those who had attempted or were at risk of self-harm and suicide), segregation reviews, staff briefings, and management meetings (including those of the safety and security teams). Our immersive approach enabled us to observe firsthand how the prison social world was evolving and analyse why criminal activity was increasing. These detailed observations were not only triangulated with our qualitative data, but also evidenced in ‘official’ documents–including observations by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (2015, 2019, 2022), Independent Monitoring Boards (see, for example, 2022a, 2022b, 2023) and statistical data (Ministry of Justice, 2021, 2023a; Ryan, 2022).

During interviews, questions were posed about the nature of the prison illicit economy, the nature and extent of criminal activity, violence, and individual’s experiences of such activities. In addition, we posed questions about wider situational factors, including inter alia the physical environment, organisational culture, staff-prisoner relationships, the use of power by staff, the prisoner normative code, prisoner hierarchies, and the available employment, educational and rehabilitative activities within the prison. The semi-structured interviews were transcribed and coded with NVivo, using codes centred on key themes including, but not limited to, ‘gangs’, ‘groups’, ‘organised crime’, ‘organising crime’, ‘violence’, ‘drugs’, ‘the illicit economy’, ‘drones’, ‘phones’, ‘weapons’, ‘social hierarchy’, and ‘social norms’.

Further contextual information was provided by two further studies, including a focused case study and a regional analysis of crime in prison. In the latter case, the Police and Crime Commissioners of Staffordshire Police, West Midlands Police, West Mercia Police and Warwickshire Police commissioned research on crime within prisons in their areas (Treadwell et al., 2019). We analysed trends regarding patterns of crime and criminal prosecutions across a wide region and with the input of police, prisons, regional/national intelligence units, the regional organised crime unit, the Crown Prosecution Service, and Ministry of Justice/HM Prison and Probation Service. In addition, lead author was invited to examine the emergence of a prison-based criminal network within a Category B Local prison. This study involved access to intelligence drawn from a range of sources (prison, police, probation, the regional intelligence centre and National County Lines Co-ordination centre). It also included a serious of follow-up meetings with key professionals and stakeholders involved in the policing of criminal networks within prisons and into the community.

How organised crime ecosystems develop and function in prison

Motivated offenders

Crime within prison cannot function without motivated offenders. Motivated offenders are those who voluntarily control and/or facilitate access to illicit goods for the purpose of financial and social capital. In a community context, Varese (2011: 16) argues one possible hindrance to the successful ‘transplantation’ of organised crime into new territories is a sufficient ‘supply’ of motivated and credible individuals who can quickly establish a reputation for intimidation and/or violence in the new setting. However, prisons are inherently susceptible to the ongoing ‘supply’ (Varese, 2011: 16) of offenders, including those who are convicted of offences related to organised crime. Not only are prisoners transferred from court, or moved post-sentencing, but others are transferred due to re-categorisation (e.g. from Category B to Category C), as a security or ‘disruptive’ move, or to access a specific offending behaviour programme.

In our study, the motivation to engage in organised and entrepreneurial crime arose from three sources. First, prisoners still felt under pressure to ‘provide’ for their families during their imprisonment. As one prisoner explained, drug dealing ‘puts food on lad’s tables out there and in here’. In the emasculating prison world–which offered little in the way of meaningful employment or wages, and curtailed opportunities to financially support family members, some prisoners sought to be the responsible ‘family man’ and ‘keep a roof on [the] house’. For those who enjoyed ‘grafting’, and could anticipate release, the ability to continue ‘doing what we do’ during their imprisonment was reassuring and maintained a connection to the streets that they were temporarily removed from. In addition, selling contraband and ‘hustling’ enabled men to relieve their own impoverishment within prison, which was often severe (also see Gooch, 2022, 2025a, 2025b).

Second, prisons were marketplaces where drug dealers could generate extraordinary profits (in the tens of thousands of pounds) from relatively small amounts of drugs and/or items such as mobile telephones. Indeed, a common refrain was that prison drugs markets were more lucrative than street drug markets:

Jail is quite easy so there’s not much of a deterrent not to come back and there’s drugs and stuff. You can sell them for a lot more money in jail than you can outside.

The market prices for drugs varied depending on the ease of supply. Nonetheless, the price of ‘hot’ commodities, such as drugs and phones were much higher than similar items in the community (by 10 to 100-fold). Conforming to market trends in the community, goods were worth what dealers demanded (and how ‘greedy’ they wanted to be) and what consumers were willing to pay. Those in control of their illicit economy–whether within prison or the community–benefitted from the high demand and inflated prices. Even those who were not previously connected with organised crime would affiliate with these networks within prison, partly because they quickly recognised the financial gains associated with doing so or because they were socialising with those who play ‘leading roles’ and willingly (and sometimes, not so willingly) became involved. Indeed, prisoners were deliberately jeopardising their freedom to facilitate the trafficking of drugs into the prison (also see Gooch and Treadwell, 2020). For example:

People just get bird sentences just to make money because the money’s just ridiculous. I knew someone that just literally just come to jail just to make money. He made a lot of money you know what I mean? Come back for three months, make a nice £10,000 then fuck off. Come back three months later, they do another £15,000 or even more, depending. It’s crazy mate, it’s just absolute crazy.

Thus, the opportunities for quick and ready access to large sums of money made entrepreneurial crime particularly appealing.

Third, while financial gain is a vital driver (also see Marsh, 2020), the visible accumulation of wealth and material goods also served both a communicative and performative function, conferring a degree of personal esteem, economic power and social capital. For example:

If you saw my cell now. . . I’ve got my Versace pillows, I’ve got my fluffy wall, I’ve got my lamps, I’ve got my rugs . . . I’ve got my sick [good] bedding, I’ve got my memory foam pillow, I’ve got my Versace clothes. I’ve got my Armani flip flops. I’ve got my comforts, do you know what I mean? I make it look homely.

The prisoner hierarchy had evolved so those who sit at the apex of the hierarchy were those who were ‘earning’ from illicit markets. The sale of contraband within prison attracted status, power and control. However, gaining such status also required hierarchical structures of association (Cohen, 1977) where ‘Middlemen’, enforcers and ‘Foot soldiers’ were needed for the operation and the ‘Businessmen’ to succeed, drawing much greater numbers of prisoners into drug enterprise (also see Crewe, 2006; Gooch and Treadwell, 2023). For the Businessmen and enforcers, having sufficient ‘carceral capital’ and a reputation for violence, was an ‘asset’ (Varese, 2011: 14) because it eased control of illicit markets, reduced competition (Gambetta, 1993; Reuter, 1983) and mitigated the likelihood of non-compliance and ‘violations’ (such as robbery, non-repayment of debt, threats). Varese (2011: 14) notes that in the community, the migration of organised crime can be more difficult because individuals are relatively unknown in the new territories and do not have the necessary reputation for violence. Within the prisons in our study, though, a person’s reputation proceeded them, or was verified by acquaintances, or was assessed by googling or enquiring about the nature of their offence (also see Gooch, 2025a). Prisoners were also keen observers of each other, and prone to test and assess who was weak, contemptible, likeable, or, conversely, ‘not to be fucked with’. In this context, Skarbek (2014) (too quickly) dismisses the importance of reputation in establishing governance roles by prisoners, noting that large prisoner populations make it especially difficult to establish credibility. However, status and capital within prison is not simply created through prior knowledge (which can be gleaned through Internet searches in any case) or pre-existing social networks (see Skarbek, 2020); rather, it was also situational and based on behaviour on prison wings.

Suitable consumers and targets

The prisons were environments that generated an internal supply of suitable consumers. Drug users continued established habits within prisons, while other prisoners began using drugs in prison in response to the boredom, frustration, and hopelessness of everyday prison life. The number of prisoners developing a drug habit within prison doubled in the 5 years from 2013 and 2018 (Shilson-Thomas, 2020). Moreover, HM Prison and Probation Service Prison Drugs Strategy notes that between 2012/13 and 2017/18, the rate of positive random tests for ‘traditional’ drugs in prisons ‘increased by 50%, from 7% to 10.6%, and drug use in prisons is now widespread’ (HM Prison and Probation Service, 2019: 3). At the same time, the number of adult prisoners in alcohol and drug treatment has decreased over time (Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, 2024).

Consumers were often able to discern whom they could access drugs from. Some were quickly offered drugs on arrival and/or word rapidly spread as to who to approach for drugs. Drug dealers and sellers knew they had a captive market:

Everybody has a general person who’s doing that, so if you like the big drugs and you were selling them off the street, all the people that he’s supplied to has been caught thieving and that and trying to feed their habit or you know. He walks in through the door where are they heading for, straight to the dealer he’s got a captive audience, he’s opened a shop, he’s running the wing. He hasn’t done anything, well the only thing he’s done is turn up.

Consumers were also willing to diversify their drug habits according to what was available (primarily psychoactive substances):

Habitual drug-users, people that have used heroin, and things like that, they’re not arsed, they’ll take anything they can get their hands on. So, they’ll take legal medication that the people aren’t taking. They’re going to take any drug that they can get their hands on.

Although consumers relied on prison wages, most were dependant on financial provisions from loved ones in the community. While some prisoners were willing customers, they were vulnerable to exploitation since dealers had the power to set the prices. Drugs enabled prisoners to self-medicate, manage boredom, temporarily escape or dull the existential problems of prison and ‘melt away the bars’ (also see Bucerius et al., 2023; Cope, 2003; Crewe, 2005; Gooch and Treadwell, 2020). Increasingly, ‘coping’ with imprisonment was a daily burden. For example:

Then you will also have the individuals that have never probably taken drugs in their life but they just cannot deal with this whole environment of prison and the whole atmosphere, so they need something to blot out where they are, and if they can’t get prescribed medication, they will take the next available thing which is not always the right thing.

One of the most significant features of the last decade was that the number of suitable consumers and possible targets expanded beyond those who entered prison as established drug users. This demand was generated by several key changes: (1) impoverished regimes, (2) indecent conditions and an inability to access basic items such as clothing, bedding and toiletries, (3) difficulties obtaining prescribed medication, and, (4) a ‘structural hopelessness’ created by increasingly precarious paths to release, lengthier sentences and the perceived injustice of recall and sentencing decisions (also see Gooch and Treadwell, 2020; His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, 2023a; Jarman and Vince, 2022).

A lack of effective guardianship

Guardians are those whose physical proximity to potential crime events or emotional proximity to potential offenders might discourage crime (Felson, 1995; Felson and Cohen, 1980). Theoretically at least, guardianship within prisons could come from prison officers or other prisoners. However, as Van der Laan (2012) notes, criminal entrepreneurs are adept at manipulating environments to avoid detection. Equally, and despite the use of CCTV, relatively high levels of organisation, and presence of prison staff, prisons can never oversee prisoners with ‘total’ or unrelenting supervision. Rather the ‘system of power’ is defective (Sykes, 1958), and prison officers can choose to underuse their powers, retreat, or be intentionally ‘absent’ from the landings (Crewe et al., 2014; Liebling, 2011; Liebling et al., 2011).

Since the 2010s, the extent and effectiveness of prison officer guardianship has been particularly strained. Radical changes to staffing profiles of prisons led to a dramatic reduction in the number of prison officers (National Offender Management Service, 2013). Over a five period (2010-2015), for example, the number of prison officers decreased by 5,000 (more than 25%) through a combination of voluntary redundancy and natural attrition (National Offender Management Service, 2017). Although attempts were made to recruit a ‘new generation of prison officers’ in response to the growing population crisis, prison officers were still leaving just as quickly as they joined (Ministry of Justice, 2025). Thus, it was common during our research to find prison landings staffed by low numbers of inexperienced officers without the management structures of previous eras. Set against a background of increasing prison violence (Ministry of Justice, 2023b), prison officers were increasingly fearful and felt unsupported. In addition, most had not yet received sufficient training and ongoing support to develop competence and skill in prison officer work:

And that’s because nobody’s got a clue how to deal with some of these people that we’ve got in prison because frankly prisoners are running the prisons these days, it’s not the staff running prisons. The prisoners are running prisons and they are getting more and more dangerous by the day because in a prison, like this, like I say we’ve got so many inexperienced staff that some of these very experienced innate criminals who can manipulate anything they want are doing just that.

Prison staff enabled criminal activity by simply tolerating behaviour that they knew to be less than appropriate, ignoring obvious rule breaking, permitting prisoners to do things that facilitated harm, and/or by lacking a professional curiosity to explore indicators of criminal activity. This fostered criminal ecosystems in two primary ways. First, the relative retreat of prison officers and failure to enforce rules and boundaries appropriately and ‘rightly’ (Liebling, 2011) left a ‘power vacuum’ that prisoners stepped into. Prisoners governed when prison officers failed to or chose not to (Skarbek, 2014), but this was not a benevolent form of prisoner governance (cf. with the ‘right men’ in Sykes, 1958). It was typically those who were motivated to continue or begin criminal enterprise who gained power and control. Notably, prisoners did not attempt to constrain the criminal entrepreneurs (also see Gooch and Treadwell, 2020, 2023). The prisoner normative code still held salience (cf. Skarbek, 2014), but had evolved to castigate the debtors and drug users who seemingly could not manage their finance and addictions (the ‘debt heads’ and ‘spice heads’), not those who extort and exploit others (c.f. Sykes, 1958; Sykes and Messinger, 1960).

Second, the striking absence of ‘jailcraft’ (Crewe et al., 2011, 2015) meant that signs of criminal activity went unnoticed (because some prison officers did not know what to look for), unrecorded (because officers did not know what to record or why) and/or went unattended to (because officers were too few in number, too busy, too frightened, or drifted back to the relative comfort and safety of staff offices). There was, then, no ‘check’ on criminal activity and little rule or ‘law enforcement’. This was often subtle behaviour and could be simply interpreted as ‘lax’ or insufficiently robust supervision. For example, unlocking a prisoner who should be in his cell, letting a prisoner go to another wing when he should not, or letting six prisoners enter a cell of a (known) vulnerable prisoner without asking questions. However, it was a ‘dangerous’ form of ‘penal lightness’ (Crewe et al., 2014; Sparks et al., 1996), and had the effect of corrupting State power, facilitating harm (including violence, enforcement activities, and the movement of contraband within the prison), and leaving the vulnerable and distressed unprotected and uncared for. It was not ‘light’ in the potentially positive sense implied by Crewe et al. (2014), that is it did not provide ‘more psychological space to be themselves and feel more human’, or constitute a less oppressive form of penal authority (Crewe et al., 2014: 396). Rather, it had the effect of creating more suitable consumers because those who were distressed and/or could not rely on prison officers for emotional support or physical safety would turn to drug use to escape their present reality and ‘have their day out of prison’. The unwillingness and unavailability of prison officers to govern reconfigured the balance of penal power (Crewe and Liebling, 2017) in ways that disrupted the moral and social order of the prison. In one (Category B Local) prison, the lack of professional behaviour was more overt and staff (including custodial managers) permitted or actively organised ‘straighteners’ within cells (where prisoners were assaulted). In another Category B Local prison, certain prisoners were allowed to function as quasi-prison officers (see Gooch and Treadwell, 2023).

Enablers

For criminal networks to function effectively within prison, enablers are needed within the prison and the community. The use of enablers has been observed in organised crime – especially in relation to money laundering where people working in legitimate occupations in organisations such as banks can help facilitate criminal cash deposits (Middleton and Levi, 2015). To sustain organised crime within the prison system, enablers were needed to: manufacture goods, purchase goods, deliver goods, throw or fly a package into a prison, manage and effect financial transactions, launder money, communicate changes in security tactics, organise deliveries and exchanges, communicate intelligence about when searches will happen, and facilitate communication. In this way, what can at first glance appear to be a small amount of drug misuse within the prison walls, required a far wider network of familial, social and/or business contacts. Within the ecosystems we observed, there were three main types of enablers – (1) those outside the prison system who were willing enablers, (2) those outside the prison system who were coerced enablers and (3) prison staff.

Indeed, partners, family members and friends were effective enablers when, for example, bringing and passing contraband through domestic visits. Prison visitors were sometimes linked to more than one prison, and in this way could facilitate networks across the prison estate not just from a single prison into the community. For example, in one case study, one (female) prison visitor was connected to 10 other prisons across the country. However, the boundaries between willing complicity and criminal exploitation were sometimes unclear. For example, in one prison, individuals were being coerced to add particular (female) individuals to their list of prison visitors to facilitate drug trafficking. In another prison, care experienced women were asked to act as drivers, visitors and conveyers in drug enterprise. Typically, prison visitors caught with prohibited items were arrested, and treated as offenders, not as potential victims of exploitation.

Prison staff could also be willing enablers of criminal enterprise within prison. Imprisonment often connects experienced criminals with inexperienced and poorly paid prison staff. The effect was that some prisoners exploited the knowledge deficit, perceived weakness and inexperience of staff to induce or cajole them into criminal involvement (sometimes within the context of a romantic or sexual relationship). The amounts that prisoners reported that staff would be paid were fairly consistent, ranging from £2,000 to £3,000 per transaction.

One or two of them have been arrested for it as well. Prison staff earning £27,000. You’re talking just over a few grand a month. About £2,250 or £2,300. What about if somebody gives you £2,000 a week. How would you feel? Temptation runs high. It is a temptation. This is how most of the stuff gets into prison. Temptation runs high. I’ll be honest with you, one or two of them I get to know the officers quite well because he used to come in the room bringing stuff.

Why some prison staff become involved in criminal activity is not well researched (see, by way of exception, Goldsmith et al., 2016). During our research, there were three primary ways that staff became involved in illicit activities. First, some individuals were planted by organised crime groups and/or were the partners or family members of serving prisoners. They joined the Prison Service with the intention of being involved in criminal activity if needed. Vetting processes were limited in their ability to identify such individuals and did not have the same information as, for example, the Police National Database (PND). In one Category B Training prison, for example, whose security staff had access to the PND, it was quickly discovered that a girlfriend of a serving prisoner connected with organised crime was in fact a prison officer. Second, and far more common, prison staff were groomed or threatened. Prisoners were attuned to signs of weakness and vulnerability among staff and it was not uncommon to find that those who have been ‘conditioned’ were facing personal difficulty in some way, such as a recent breakdown of a long-term relationship or financial difficulties. Third, for some staff (including healthcare staff), the relationship began sexually. In other cases, volatile or turbulent prisons led to offers of protection by certain prisoners, particularly to female officers. Once attachments had formed, prisoners would then make requests knowing that it would be difficult for officers to report anything they were uncomfortable with since they had already ‘crossed the line’.

Suitable tools and equipment

Sustaining a business enterprise within prison required a range of ‘props’, tools and equipment, including mobile telephones, weapons and drones. These ‘props’ – Felson and Boba (2010: 31) argue – ‘help produce crime’, particularly in prison where there may be physical separation and a prison boundary to overcome. Telephones were, of course, essential in enabling communication. Prison phones enabled some communication, but since calls were sometimes monitored, prisoners were tempted to either use ‘code words’ and language that was harder to interpret or to access mobile telephones. On average, 10,000 mobile phones were found each year within English and Welsh prisons between 2017 and 2024 (Ministry of Justice, 2024), although this is likely to be an underestimate as these figures only account for items seized. Ellison et al. (2018: 5), suggest that mobile phones enable prisoners to ‘sustain richer and more meaningful relationships with family members’ but some such communications were also linked to requests for financial aid and/or the organisation of drug supply and/or repayments. In addition, some prisoners used mobile phones to intimidate and threaten jury members, organise ‘hits’ in the community, organise drivers, co-ordinate deliveries and demand payments. Moreover, prisoners could use a pin-phone to have three-way conversations with another prisoner on a mobile phone and an associate (e.g. a driver or other co-conspirator) in the community. Encrypted chat functions, such as ‘WhatsApp’ and ‘Encrochat’ were used within prison with the effect that even if an illicit mobile telephone was seized, it was difficult for local prison security teams to harvest any evidence or intelligence without assistance from local police teams or regional security teams.

While visits and throwovers constituted one way of conveying illicit items into a prison, the increasing availability of drones facilitated new and efficient ways of moving goods. Drones could carry large parcels, including mobile telephones, SIM cards, chargers, drugs, alcohol, tools (e.g. screwdrivers), weapons and, as in one case, a Freeview box and remote control. Drones could also be flown from some distance away from the prison directly to a specific cell or area of the prison and at times in the day when there were fewer prison officers:

Obviously drones carry it to the windows . . . then [the package] can be as big as you want it to be. It’s that busy in there with drones that they’re bumping into each other at night, and there are keys [kilos] of it [drugs] coming in.

To avoid detection, some prisoners were coerced into collecting the drone ‘loads’ from their cells, with other prisoners taking advantage either of a broken cell window, or actively damaging a cell window, to facilitate the ‘drone drop’ (also see, e.g., Independent Monitoring Board, 2022a).

Finally, weapons were also a key tool within the criminal ecosystem. Weapons were commonly manufactured in cells, diverted from kitchens and workshops within the prison, or flown and thrown into the prison. Drones could easily transport larger and more dangerous weapons such as firearms into a prison (also see Action on Armed Violence, 2016). In the period 2017–2024, for example, the number of weapons found within English and Welsh prisons more than doubled, from 4,780 to 11,641 (Ministry of Justice, 2024). Indeed, previous research has noted the performative function of visual punishment in ensuring organised crime ecosystems flourish (see Lantz, 2016). There were several examples of this in our research. Possession of a weapon served a variety of functions, including: personal protection (especially when staff are unavailable or perceived to be untrustworthy (Brennan, 2019)), reinforcing the seriousness and validity of threats, signalling a willingness to enforce threats and demands (Brennan, 2019; Williams and Liebling, 2023); or (seriously) assaulting a prisoner as a form of enforcement or punishment for breaching the normative code (e.g. to pay your debts or to not ‘grass’). Weapons were also used to slash or stab prisoners and punish them for their disloyalty and betrayal, especially those who were ‘firm hoppers’ (those who move between criminal groups) or those who refused to comply with threats and demands.

Concluding thoughts: Developing an ecological theory of entrepreneurial and organised crime in prison

Although concerns have been expressed about the development of organised crime in prisons, this article illustrates the prison is not often conceptualised by criminologists as part of a criminal ecosystem in which organised crime can operate (Hobbs, 1995). Indeed, this article challenges the assumption that the prison incapacitates all offenders and provides the surest solution to organised crime. In making this argument, we have suggested that prison can be conceived as an entrepreneurial ecosystem of organised crime. Previous research has observed how organised crime is dependent upon criminal cooperation, building relationships and taking advantage of legal routine activities (Van de Bunt et al., 2014). While the prison appears to be an environment where routine organised crime activities should be closed to motivated offenders, our evidence suggests that they are locations where entrepreneurial forms of organised crime can flourish. However, for the ecosystem to become operational, it requires several factors to converge and the environment to be manipulated to support criminal activity.

Indeed, thinking of organised crime in a prison setting as an ‘ecosystem’ has many benefits. First, it allows us to identify and analyse the individual parts of the ecosystem that allow it to function. While any one factor – motivated offenders, suitable consumers, insufficient guardianship, enablers and props and equipment – can of course be observed on its own, it is the combination of these factors that produces an environment conducive to organised crime. For example, without motivated offenders to sell and/or distribute contraband, supply dwindles even if there are sufficient suitable consumers, enablers, props, and a lack of guardianship. Without suitable consumers, demand reduces, and market prices decrease or flatten (e.g. because there is more competition and consumers can be more selective). Increased guardianship could disrupt organised crime networks in prison in several ways. Offenders might be less motivated when there is more risk associated with trading and less opportunity, with some concluding that supplying contraband may not be worthwhile. More effective guardianship could also result in the increased likelihood of props and equipment being found (e.g., more vigilant guarding would mean passing and drone drops are noticed). Also, the number of suitable consumers might reduce if ‘needs’, ‘crisis’ and ‘distress’ is better managed by effective prison officer work, thereby resulting in less need to ‘self-medicate’ with illicit drugs. Without enablers, supply is hindered (and would be restricted to what individuals can secrete), enforcement activities are restricted to the prison (limiting the ability to persuade prisoners to forgo their freedom or families to repay prisoner debts), and financial transactions are less easily managed.

Second, it provides us with the analytical framework to consider how organised crime in prisons might change over time. Indeed, organised crime tends to be responsive to supply and demand factors. For example, the evidence suggests that supply of desired products such as drugs is increasing due to consumer demand and enablers facilitating supply into prisons. This suggestion is supported both through our primary fieldwork and wider evidence that reports the number of drugs found in prison is continuing to increase (Ministry of Justice, 2024). Equally, there is also some evidence that the demand is leading to greater diversity in the prison drug economy, further stimulating the market. For example, in March 2024, four drug-related deaths at His Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Parc were – for the first time – linked to Nitrazene, a synthetic opioid said to be more potent than Fentanyl, Heroin or Methadone (Grey and Media, 2024; Hansard, 2024; Wertheimer, 2024). Thinking of about organised crime as an ecosystem allows analysts to begin to tease out the factors that might change over time to increase supply and demand. There is, however, a limit on the extent to which organised entrepreneurial crime can continue to expand. Even in States where prisons could be described as ‘Failed State prisons’ (Liebling, 2015), and where officials provide ‘little governance, few resources and poor-quality administration’, prisoners are still physically separated from society and there is still some regulation of who and what enters the prison (Skarbek and Woltz, 2024: 647). For example, in San Pedro prison in Bolivia, prison officers continue to restrict access to the prison, but they rarely enter the prison leaving prisoners to operate an ‘extreme self-governance regime’ (Skarbek and Woltz, 2024: 647). Thus, there can be a ‘lawlessness’ (Gooch, 2025a) within the prison walls where ‘power flows in illegitimate hands’ and ‘rulers fail to govern’ (Liebling, 2015: 261) but where criminal activity is partly contained by the need to overcome the prison wall or fence.

Third, our research both confirms and challenges some previous assumptions made about criminality within prison settings. Indeed, it not only helps to build on some of claims made by Skarbek (2014) but it builds an empirical grounding in the U.K. context. As previously noted, Skarbek (2020: 123) notes that prisoners are not providing ‘extra-legal’ governance in English prisons at all. Our analysis clearly suggests that organised criminal networks do exist in English prisons and prisoners develop forms of criminal governance to sustain the ecosystem. Indeed, we observed that prison officer retreat is at the heart of the development of criminal governance: allowing prisoners to develop new forms of governance and punishment similar to those often observed for organised crime groups in the community (see Von Lampe, 2016). Further to this, Skarbek (2014, 2024) also suggests, in the U.K. context, street gangs do not tend to be imported directly from the street into prisons (also see Irwin and Cressey, 1962). While our study provides little evidence to refute this, our evidence does suggest criminal networks developed on the outside of prison walls can continue to operate when core members are in prison. Indeed, for many, time in prison would appear to be a business opportunity, opening up new markets.

Forth, thinking about organised crime in prisons as an ecosystem has potential for developing preventive approaches. The framework presented in this article allows for detailed understanding of how organised crime develops and can be applied to different prison environments. However, knowing who motivated offenders are, who consumers are, why there is a lack of guardianship, who enablers are and how tools/ props are used could also help develop preventive approaches. Indeed, routine activity theory is largely based on the premise that removal of the opportunities that make crime desirable for motivated offenders can lead to reductions in crime (see Felson, 2003). Therefore, shaping prison environments to increase the effort and risks, and reduce the rewards, of organised crime for motivated offenders could pay dividends. This might be achieved through trying to reduce supply and demand for goods and services provided by organised crime groups in prisons, increasing levels of guardianship, reducing the ease at which enablers can operate in prison environments and reducing access to the tools required to operate in such environments.

Overall, we would argue that conceptualising the prison as an ecosystem holds much potential for advancing research and understanding in this area. That said, this article is intended to be the starting for further analysis and there are several areas that require further exploration. For example, it is possible that more detailed research could identify different types organised crime structures and networks operating across different types of prison settings. With this in mind, the extent to which women’s prisons are sites for organised crime and the role of female criminal entrepreneurs is not known and merits analysis. Equally, while several ‘enablers’ occupy critical roles in organised crime within prison, further research could usefully consider the nature of their involvement, their motivations, and how voluntary their complicity is. However, it needs to be underlined that the main purpose of developing the concept of ecosystems of organised in prisons is not simply to generate high level theoretical academic studies. The concept needs to be applied to the development of preventive strategies that can help to improve the lives of prisoners and increase their potential of living a crime free life after prison.