Locks which protect data structures used within atomic sections of concurrent programs are inferred from atomic sections and acquired in a manner to avoid deadlock. Locks may be inferred by expression correspondence using a backward inter-procedural analysis of an atomic section. Locks may be sorted according to a total order and acquired early in an atomic section to prevent deadlock. Multiple granularity of locks are determined and employed. Fine grained locks may be inferred and acquired to reduce contention. Coarse grained locks may be determined and substituted for fine grained locks when necessary for unbounded locations or to reduce the number of finer grained locks.