Experts: Prison Gang Reach Increasingly Extends Into Streets
by Alan Greenblatt
April 05, 2013 2:14 PM
Prison violence is getting out of prison.
Authorities are looking into the possibility that white supremacist prison
gangs may have been involved in a series of shootings of public officials in
Colorado and Texas. If so, criminologists say, this would be part of a
larger pattern of prison gangs extending their reach.
"Increasingly, these prison gangs are spilling out onto the streets," says
Mark Potok, an editor with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks
hate groups.
On Friday, police in Colorado took into custody James Lohr, a known
associate of a white supremacist prison gang called the 211 Crew. Lohr and
another associate of the gang had been wanted for questioning in last
month's slaying of Tom Clements, Colorado's chief of corrections. died in a
shootout with Texas authorities and also had 211 Crew ties.
Members of another such prison gang, the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, have
fallen under suspicion in the of a Kaufman County, Texas, district attorney
and his wife last Saturday and the assistant district attorney in January.
There's still a great deal of uncertainty about who committed the Colorado
and Texas slayings. But law enforcement interest in prison gangs reflects a
sense that they are becoming more of a danger to the society at large.
"Their reach beyond the prison has tended to be relatively minimal, but that
has started to change," says Pete Simi, a criminologist at the University of
Nebraska, Omaha. "With so many people circulating in and out, you're seeing
that with gangs of all races and ethnicities."
The Birth Of The Brotherhood
Last November, state, local and federal law enforcement agencies announced
the of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, including four of its top leaders, on
charges of murder and numerous other crimes.
Some officials have speculated that the indictments may have provided a
motive for revenge in the recent killings of Kaufman County District
Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, as well as his top deputy,
Mark Hasse.
Like a number of racially based prison gangs, the all-white Aryan
Brotherhood of Texas started about 30 years ago in response to changing
prison conditions.
An unrelated Aryan Brotherhood was formed in the 1960s at California's San
Quentin prison. Inmates in Texas petitioned to be part of that group but
were denied, so they started a gang of their own.
"It's not a chapter or sub-unit, it's a completely distinct gang," Potok
says.
Conditions in Texas prisons in the 1980s were ripe for racially based gangs
to form. In response to a 1970s court decision, facilities underwent
enormous changes, says James W. Marquart, a professor of criminology at the
University of Texas at Dallas.
Texas prisons previously employed minimal staff and a trusty system, with
dominant inmates managing the cellblocks and living areas. A court found
this arrangement unconstitutional.
"You had to replace those strong inmates with correctional officers, and an
authority vacuum developed," he says.
The Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, along with other gangs such as the Mexican
Mafia and the Black Guerrilla Family, developed in part as mutual protection
societies, with prisoners of various races protecting each other from
threats.
"The gangs went from protecting themselves in prison on racial lines to
evolving into criminal enterprises," says Terry Pelz, a criminal justice
consultant and former Texas prison warden.
A Giant Leap
The 211 Crew was founded in 1995 for similar reasons. Benjamin Davis started
the group after claiming his jaw was broken by a black inmate.
He is currently serving time in a Colorado prison. that Davis recently had
been placed in solitary confinement due to his connection with Evan Ebel, a
suspected 211 Crew member who has been linked to Clements' death.
The 211 Crew is not known to have previously operated outside of Colorado,
but Texas authorities are looking into whether Ebel, who died in a shootout
with Texas law enforcement, had anything to do with the Kaufman County
killings.
Along with some other experts, Pelz is skeptical that the Aryan Brotherhood
of Texas would be involved in something as daring as the twin slayings of
public prosecutors.
The planned nature of the assassinations would represent a different
approach for a gang like the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, Simi says, noting
that much of its violence is directed inward, toward disciplining members.
To Pelz, the Kaufman County killings seem more like the work of a Mexican
drug cartel than the Aryan Brotherhood. "Having studied them for 30 years,
this doesn't seem like their style," he says. "If it is them, it would be an
extremely giant step for them to make."
But gangs evolve. And law enforcement officials have noted increasing
connections between Mexican drug cartels and gangs in the U.S.
"Federal, state and local law enforcement officials are observing a growing
nexus between the Mexican drug cartels, illegal alien smuggling rings and
U.S.-based gangs," the FBI noted in its 2011 .
"It may seem puzzling that a white supremacist gang would work with a
Mexican criminal organization, but the collaboration is not unusual for the
Aryan Brotherhood of Texas," Claire O'Neill McCleskey wrote last year for ,
which covers organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean. "In the
past it has collaborated with the Mexican Mafia in Texas and with
Mexico-based drug-trafficking organizations in a number of criminal
activities, including human trafficking, cross-border arms dealing and drug
smuggling."
Crime Follows The Money
Pelz notes that regardless of their initial ideology or racial motivations,
prison gangs invariably end up caring most about their incomes. "It's all
about money," he says.
"There is an enormous underground prison economy," Simi says. And the size
of the economy prison gangs can hope to control has been growing, based on
their increasing interest in enterprises outside the prison walls.
Former prisoners are expected not only to answer to leaders on the inside,
but also to provide earnings through the drug trade.
"Their business is running drugs," Potok says. "A lot of white supremacist
gangs basically control the meth trade in the United States."
What's sobering, he says, is that the leaders of prison gangs can continue
to issue orders even if they are confined to solitary due to their known
status as gang leaders. They use girlfriends, wives and sometimes attorneys
to get their coded messages out, he says.
"They are building a real criminal empire out on the streets, not just
within the prison walls," Potok says. "People are aging out of their terms
and getting out on the streets and prison gangs are increasingly demanding
that people stay in the gangs as earners."
Pelz, the former warden, says other white supremacist gangs are far more
violent than the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. And he says regardless of what
gang you're talking about, no amount of indictments or arrests ever seems to
deprive it of the leadership it needs to keep going.
"You take the leaders out, there are others to replace them," Pelz says.
"We've seen the same types of against other gangs, and they're still healthy
enterprises, as far as criminal enterprises go."
==========================================
(F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this
message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to
these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed
within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with
"Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976.
The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The
Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain
permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials
if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting,
teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria
for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies
as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four
criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is
determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not
substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use
copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS
PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment