Prison Gangs
Prison Gangs
Michael Dooley
Aiken Tech
CRJ 242.013
Prison Gangs
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 occupy the fringes of various conceptual and organizational frameworks, most notable ethnic, religious, or social organizations. Nevertheless, they have demonstrated that they can constitute a threat to prison security and public safety (gang buster). In 1986 the United States Department of Justice identified 114 different prison gangs in the U.S., and with a membership that may constitute as much as three percent of the total prison population in the United States. Of those, five have emerged as the most powerful and influential: The Mexican Mafia, the Lu Nuestra Familia, the Texas Syndicate, the Aryan Brotherhood, and the Black Guerilla Family. They all maintain the membership requirement of murder or the spilling of another's blood. In addition, each of these organizations relies heavily on illegal revenues from the drug trade (police studies). Some of the gangs are nothing but a group of inmates in one prison, while other gangs could be large enough to connect with other branches through out the U.S. Prison. Gangs are flourishing from California to Massachusetts, in 1996, the Federal Bureau of Prisons found that prison disturbances soared by about 400 percent in the early nineties, which authorities say indicated that gangs
Michael Dooley
Aiken Tech
CRJ 242.013
Prison Gangs
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 occupy the fringes of various conceptual and organizational frameworks, most notable ethnic, religious, or social organizations. Nevertheless, they have demonstrated that they can constitute a threat to prison security and public safety (gang buster). In 1986 the United States Department of Justice identified 114 different prison gangs in the U.S., and with a membership that may constitute as much as three percent of the total prison population in the United States. Of those, five have emerged as the most powerful and influential: The Mexican Mafia, the Lu Nuestra Familia, the Texas Syndicate, the Aryan Brotherhood, and the Black Guerilla Family. They all maintain the membership requirement of murder or the spilling of another's blood. In addition, each of these organizations relies heavily on illegal revenues from the drug trade (police studies). Some of the gangs are nothing but a group of inmates in one prison, while other gangs could be large enough to connect with other branches through out the U.S. Prison. Gangs are flourishing from California to Massachusetts, in 1996, the Federal Bureau of Prisons found that prison disturbances soared by about 400 percent in the early nineties, which authorities say indicated that gangs