Looking at violence in prison from a sociological perspective, Sykes's Society of Captives remains a classic in penology. Influenced by structural-functionalism, he describes the great influence of the prison structure on its inmates and emphasises the importance of violence for the stabilisation of the prison social order. This article will re-examine Sykes's assumptions about the relationship between structure and action, referring to Bourdieu and a biographical approach using a case example from a qualitative longitudinal study with male inmates in young offenders' institutions in Germany. It concludes by asking how the meaning of violence in prison changes, looked at from these different theoretical perspectives. Notes and references (Published Abstract)