The indulgency pattern of prison control buys compliance from inmates by providing nonviolent inmate power sources that allow certain inmate groups to induce compliance from other inmates. Administrative succession often initiates a downward spiral of disorder through the disruption of these informal control mechanisms. The disruption of the indulgency pattern undermines the core economic and power relationships in inmate society. When the corruption engendered by the indulgency pattern becomes extensive, prison administrative change is usually initiated, and subsequent policy changes and attempts to eliminate corruption in inmate society create the conditions for an eruption of inmate violence. A wide range of incentives is necessary for effective prison control. Incentives increase the level of punishments and place the prison population in a structure of individualized control rather than in postures of mass opposition and retaliation. Overcrowded prisons, resulting primarily from a surplus population unable to compete successfully in the highly competitive labor market preferred by capitalists, together with the low stock of available legitimate rewards for inmates and the ultimate ineffectiveness of coercion have produced a crisis in prison control. Ultimately, the internal contradictions of control within the prison derive from more general contradictions involved in controlling a surplus population necessary for the maximization of profits and the repression and cooptation of threats to ruling class legitimacy. Sixty-seven references and 17 notes are provided.