Gangs an Unlikely Source of Order at Pelican Bay

Pelican Bay is California’s maximum-security prison on the coast near the Oregon border—recently famous for hunger strikes and allegations of torture. It’s as dangerous as any place of its kind, full of inmates serving life sentences, but it’s prison gangs—not the guards—who keep order. That’s according to Graeme Wood, one of the few outsiders who have been there. He wrote about it for the Atlantic magazine, where he’s a contributing editor.