Based on an interdisciplinary approach, the study demonstrated that the issue of prison subcultures and informal prison hierarchies that produce the relevant subcultures is not a monopoly of criminology, sociology or criminal law. The study of this issue through the prism of political science is more promising since it is political science that allows us to analyze these issues from a higher perspective of national and supranational security. Informal prison hierarchies are a matter of relations of power and subordination, power struggles in prisons and a free society, and the use of prisons and subcultural prison symbols to spread political power by powerful actors, including states.

The research has led to the conclusion that the external attributes of prison subculture, which are produced and disseminated by informal prison hierarchies, in fact, only conceal the true nature of this phenomenon, where such nature is related only to the organization of the extraction and subsequent distribution of material resources by informal prison hierarchies. At the same time, such seizure and distribution of material resources are connected to gaining power in penitentiary institutions and a free society.

The experience of informal prison hierarchies in many countries shows that due to the greater openness of prisons to society and the spread of the influence of prison criminal organizations on free society, it is possible to argue that the boundaries between the concepts of "criminal subculture" and "prison subculture" are increasingly dissolving. This is especially evident in the United States, Mexico, and South America, where the concept of a "street gang" is automatically a "prison gang" and vice versa. Moreover, similar trends are also becoming characteristic of European countries due to the penetration of prison gangs from the New World into the European "market".

The rise of informal prison hierarchies worldwide raises the issue of the "rehabilitative ideal" and its – literally – protection from the spreading influence of informal prison hierarchies and their subcultural symbols. After the "rehabilitative ideal" crisis in the 1970s, it has not yet gotten rid of the signs of marginality. The influence of informal prison hierarchies should be considered the main obstacle to implementing rehabilitation programs in prison; in many countries, this influence makes this marginality absolute.

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