Gangs in The United States - Prison Based Gangs

Prison Based Gangs

Prison gangs, like most street gangs, are formed for protection against other gangs. The goal of many street gang members is to gain the respect that comes from being in a prison gang. Prison gangs use street gangs members as their power base for which they recruit new members. For many members reaching prison gang status shows the ultimate commitment to the gang.

A prison gang is a gang that is started in a prison. Some prison gangs are transplanted from the street, and in some occasions, prison gangs "outgrow" the penitentiary and engage in criminal activities on the outside. Many prison gangs are racially oriented. Gang umbrella organizations like the Folk Nation and People Nation have originated in prisons.

One prominent example of a prison gang is the Aryan Brotherhood, an organization known for its violence and calls for white supremacy. On July 28, 2006, after a six-year federal investigation, four leaders of the gang were convicted of racketeering, murder, and conspiracy charges. Founded in the mid 1960s, the gang, known as the 'Brand' or the 'Rock' in the federal and state prison systems, is famous for being affiliated with the white supremacist paramilitary hate group the Aryan Nations, with the Nazi Low Riders prison gang acting as the Aryan Brotherhood's foot soldiers. Besides fostering pseudo-theological hate, racism, sexism, violence, and intimidation, the Aryan Brotherhood is involved in drug trafficking, extortion, illegal gambling, protection rackets, and murder inside and outside of prisons.

In the mid-1980s, the Aryan League, an alliance between the Aryan Brotherhood and Public Enemy No. 1, formed. The sub-gangs (in collaboration with their wives and girlfriends who take jobs at banks, mortgage companies, and motor vehicle departments) work together in identity theft schemes. Money from the identity theft operations is used to fund the gangs' methamphetamine business. A gang hit list discovered in the Buena Park investigation has police worried that the gangs are using stolen credit information to learn the addresses of police and their families.

Once out of prison, gang members may regroup on the outside and often cross gang lines to further their criminal careers. One example of this is David Lind, an Aryan Brotherhood member, who joined the Wonderland Gang with several non-AB fellow prison inmates in 1981. Post prison gang activities can be brutal, as evidenced by the ruthless quadruple murder of the Wonderland gang (see "Wonderland Murders") which Lind narrowly escaped.

There has been a long running racial tension between African American and Mexican American prison gangs and significant race riots in California prisons where Mexican inmates and African Americans have targeted each other particularly, based on racial reasons.