The Endless Battle with Prison Gangs

In todays United States we have a huge problem affecting society, gangs and the violence that follows them wherever they go. These days’ gangs aren’t just compiled of grown adults, they often lure in young teens to do dirty work and to add numbers to their turf. Despite laws aimed straight at these gangs they still defy the law and wreak havoc upon the territory that they claim. The members in the gang have a gang first mentality and will do everything possible to provide for and protect their fellow members. They will very rarely snitch on their own to help put a stop to some of the meaningless crimes committed by these savages.

In Policing Gangs in America, Charles Katz and Vincent Webb describes every issue in American Gangs today. The ultimate goal of this book is how the gang officers work and the different kind of atmosphere they work in. Their job isn’t like other law enforcement jobs. It’s one of the more dangerous occupation in the Criminal Justice system. These gang officers focus on how they react to public gang issues.

Prison gangs are flourishing across the country. Organized, stealthy and deadly, they are reaching out from their cells to organize and control crime in America's streets. Law enforcement personal began to systematically monitor gang activities in the 1970's. Working together, their initial attempts were to identify only gangs which had some semblance of formal structure, a constitution, bylaws, mission statement, or some identifiable tenets guiding their activities. However, with experience, staff began to realize that even less well-organized groups could still pose significant threats to the security and orderly running of an institution. Many of these smaller groups

In our prison systems today, many different gangs pose a threat to our correctional staff and other inmates. In the United States, gangs exist in forty of the fifty states. These gangs bring violence, drug trafficking and racial unrest to our correctional system.

There are many problems with gangs in prison. These gangs cause problems and threaten the well-being of others who don’t fit into their mindset or beliefs. This problem has been going on for a long time, and has cost the prison system a lot of money throughout the country.

The topic of police in general, and the brutal beatings, shootings, and arrests that have occurred over the past couple of years in the United States has hit the media full force, leaving many wondering what actions should be taken to keep the peace. Many question the system as a whole, and the training police officers receive, as well as their mental health. Across the borders, police are trained differently and follow various policies that may seem ridiculous or foreign, however, when comparing and contrasting two police systems, the similarities may be alarming, and the differences may be great, but knowing the strengths and weakness of each different system, can help towards progressing to have a better system and better training for police officers.

“Gangs have morphed from social organizations into full-fledged criminal enterprises” (Thomas, 2009, para 5). Gangs are highly sophisticated and more dangerous then ever. The number one reason to join a gang is money; and 95 percent of gangs profit comes from drug dealing

Gangs pose a threat to the safety of United States prisons by performing illegal activities and the encouraging violence. It is important to develop strategies to reduce gang recruitment, limit their influence, and sanction their misconduct in order to create a safe environment for all prisoners. With this, inmates that are involved in gangs should be put under twenty four-hour lockdown. By isolating these members, prisons will be able to limit their influence.

The United States criminal justice system has many flaws. Some can be fixed, but others have left officials of the criminal justice system dumbfounded and searching for answers. Prison gangs seem to be one of the latter. While prison gangs were first recorded in the 1950’s, they did not become a massive problem until the 1970’s (Davis). Prison gangs have contributed to violence throughout nearly every prison in the country.

The article presented on this paper reveals the problem of gangs and gang related violence in our nation’s institutions. Corrections Canada has seen a 44 per cent jump in gang members in federal prisons in the last five years, to 2,040 in 2012 from 1,421 in 2007, according to the documents obtained under access to information. The correctional service constructed a strategic framework for dealing with gangs in 2006, and implemented its gang management strategy in 2008, aiming to convince inmates to drop their affiliation and limit security risks. Gang numbers have continued to rise, according to one correctional service management document. It raises a number of

Prison gang/security threat groups are growing and impacting penitentiary's around the world in a negative way. The Aryan Brotherhood, The Guerilla Family, and the Mexican Mafia are three of many powerful and efficient gangs that flourished in a California prison. Each of these gangs has its own differences and have a long-term history that explains to the reader how these gangs started their record of criminal acts such as murder, drug trafficking, etc. Correctional staff main goal is to minimize the violence that come with the prison gangs. It is concluded that the best way to control gang violence is through separation of members and enemies. Whether if it's through transporting members to other prisons or through segregation. Studies have shown these findings may not always be effective because of the growth of prison gangs and the unique ways of communicating with other inmates in prison and on the outside world.

Prison gangs are originally formed by inmates as a way of protecting themselves from the other inmates. These gangs have turned out to be violent and thus posing a threat to security. This paper will have a look at the different gangs in prisons, their history, beliefs and missions, and the differences and similarities in these gangs.

“Sponsorship is mandatory, and only after acceptance may an inmate identify himself with a tattoo or patch” (Ralph, 1997, p.185). Most gangs utilize a “blood in, blood out basis for gang membership: A would-be member must stab a gang’s enemy in order to be admitted, and once in cannot drop out without endangering his own life” (Clear and Cole, 2000, p.260). Besides killing a rival there are other ways to enter the gang and receive acceptance. Those ways include, but are not limited to, assaulting an officer, doing drug deals, or “catching a cell” which means to go into a cell with members of the gang for which the recruit is trying to enter and fighting against them to determine if the prospective member can “hold his own”. These methods of entrance are what contribute to a large majority of the prison violence. The past prison experience relied on “the order and stability provided by the old inmate subculture (which) has been replaced by an atmosphere of conflict and tension, in which inmates align themselves into competing gangs and other inmate organizations” (Bohm and Haley, 1999, p. 351). The gang culture is also based on loyalty and trust of fellow members, such as a “united as one” attitude. This attitude has brought up confidence in offenders, but helped to diminish the effectiveness of the authority of the correctional officers. With the problem of gangs in hand, many states have

Over the years, prisons have relied on a series of deterrent methods. One popular method used is transferring known gang members to different prisons. When gang members are transferred it is usually in “higher security institutions” (Viano, n.d, p.176). The goal is to break down gangs by removing and separating key members. In a study of “the top methods” used in gang deterrence, inmate transfers were utilized “82.1” percent of the time (Viano, n.d, p. 175). Another, frequently used tool is “mail” and “phone monitoring” (Viano, n.d, p. 175). Which, has been a consistent feature for tracking gang activity thus far. For this reason, mail monitoring measures are used “81.5” percent by prisons and phone monitoring is used “72.8” percent (Viano, n.d, p.175). The other stats are as follows; “(72.8%) case dealings, (72.3%) segregation, and (64.1%) displacing members to different facilities, interrupting communications, and isolating leaders in high security facilities” (Viano, n.d, p.175).

People are becoming involved in actions related to prison-gang business. As a result, it is no longer just a corrections problem--it is also a community problem. It is a misnomer that when you lock a gang member up, they cease criminal activity. Law enforcement has realized that what happens on the inside can affect what happens on the outside and vice versa. It has only been in the last six years. The gang leaders communicate through letters as per gang investigators. Where mail is monitored, they may be carefree by using code-for example by making every 13th word of a seemingly benign letter significant. They use visits, they put messages into their artwork and in some states they use the telephone.