For example, the structure of prisons and the behavior of prison guards often provoke distrust between prisoners. Among the most obvious devices, setting up the cells so that any one prisoner cannot see any other but every one of them can hear the noise of every other creates tensions and hostility between individual prisoners. They can become virtual enemies rather than allies who might pose a common front against the guards of the system. Some of what critics think of as unnecessarily punitive and insulting treatment is functional in provoking interprisoner distrust and hence in blocking group mobilization.

QUESTION: This raises the question of whether such architectural tactics reflect deliberate design or emergent dynamics within penal systems.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 487