The hosts talk with David Skarbek, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brown University, about his new book The Puzzle of Prison Order: Why Life Behind Bars Varies Around the World.  Skarbek investigates life in a wide array of prisons—in Brazil, Bolivia, Norway, a prisoner of war camp, England and Wales, women’s prisons in California, and a gay and transgender housing unit in the Los Angeles County Jail—to understand the hierarchy of life on the inside. Drawing on economics and a vast empirical literature on legal systems, Skarbek offers a framework to understand why life on the inside varies in such fascinating and novel ways, and also how social order evolves and takes root behind bars.

Towards the end of the conversation, they discuss the way different social science disciplines tend to rely on specific methods, and the subsequent challenges of trying to cross methods in academia.