Utah’s Prison Gangs
Gang control is an aspect of security in Utah’s corrections system that has found renewed importance with a recent spike in gang membership and violence.
“Most of the public, they look at it like the guy has been picked up, he’s gone through the court process and now, everything is good,” said Pete Walters, who oversees the gang unit at the Utah State Prison and is president of the Utah Gang Investigators Association. “They get to make phone calls. They are all allowed to get and send letters. The majority of them have visits. … They, a lot of times, still have an influence over some of the groups in the neighborhood” … In an activity known as “fishing,” inmates can pass messages between their cells by way of make-shift delivery devices called kites, made with a piece of string, a note and a weight. Letters can contain hidden code words, symbols, or drawings to signal an attack on a rival. Phone calls could also contain hidden messages. Corrections gang officers are trained to intercept and decode the hidden messages …
Retaliation for a gang event on the street can play out in prison or jail; or an incident that occurs in the corrections system can have ramifications in neighborhoods. “You still have people trying to deal drugs, you still have extortion, you still have assaults,” said Jeremy Sharp, a gang officer with the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office who works at the jail. “They continue to do it here” …
While Utahns might not think the state has the same gang problems as larger cities such as Los Angeles or Chicago, the corrections system faces the same challenges in containing gang activity, Walters said. New inmates undergo mental health and physical evaluations, and checking for gang affiliations is a part of the evaluations, Walters said. Some are forthcoming about their gang ties, others deny it despite telling tattoos on their bodies, he said. Some gang members determined to be a threat are placed in high security housing. Whether someone is housed with the general prison population or in the security threat unit often depends on the inmate’s behavior, Walters said.
The article in the Salt Lake Tribune has much more detail.