Latent Function
Christian Parenti argues in his book Lockdown America that prison gangs serve a convenient function for the prison establishment and officers. They help regulate rogue and rebellious elements within the prison population without intervention from prison authorities. Parenti sees the repression dished out by gangs on non-affiliated prisoners as a latent function of prison gangs. Thus, gangs are often more-or-less tolerated by prison administrators due to the side-benefits they afford.
Read more about this topic: Prison Gang
Famous quotes containing the words latent and/or function:
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)