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Violence as Information During Prison Reform: Evidence from the Post-Soviet Region Gavin Slade British Journal of Criminology 2015Published in the British Journal of Criminology, 2015, final version available at http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/08/27/bjc.azv085.abstract?keytype=ref&#38;ijkey=1Cb7hmL3SYsCZ57 Abstract When reform occurs in prison systems, prisoner insecurity increases. One reason for this is disorganization. The disruption to informal governance structures, distributions of power, and mechanisms for establishing trust, causes conflicts. This  paper argues that a key mechanism linking disorganization to conflict and violence is information flow. Incomplete information in interpersonal interaction marks prison settings. Informal institutions for producing certainty for both staff and prisoners emerge to overcome this. Such institutions are handicapped by reform directed at reducing informal prisoner controls. In such cases, violence becomes an information-generating activity and can substitute for reputation. The paper examines this  proposition as it applies to prisoners and staff through a critical case study of radical  prison reform in the South Caucasus country of post-Soviet Georgia