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Nornagest comments on A Proposal for Defeating Moloch in the Prison Industrial Complex - Less Wrong Discussion

23 Post author: lululu 02 June 2015 10:03PM

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Comment author: Nornagest 03 June 2015 09:00:56PM 3 points [-]

Prison gangs formed from a kind of arms race of mutual self-defense.

Lots of gangs form that way -- it's one of the two main pathways to organized crime, the other one being economies of scale in selling illegal goods and services. The Bloods, for example, started out as a sort of anti-Crips self-defense force, and many yakuza organizations are generally thought to have their roots in mutual-protection societies among small commercial enterprises.