Our 2,300 inmates live in a walled-in area of thirteen acres. Their isolation is more geographic than social. Though living in an unnatural environment, unnatural because of limited choicelimited choice, they perform a good many of the customary acts of life. In living together they have relationships with one another, and the character, type, and degree of these social relationships depend on a wide variety of conditions. An important determinant of relationships in prison is the type of experiences a man has had with other persons before he came to prison. In a sense, the very fact of penitentiary residence is symptomatic of disturbed social relations in the free communitygamblingin free community.