If Washington has a school of hard knocks, its registrar’s office can be found at a prison in Shelton. Most days men come there by the busload, shuffling into the Washington Corrections Center for their introduction — or reintroduction — to the state prison system. Story from the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

The Shelton prison is largely a 1,600-man holding facility for convicts headed to the 10 other men’s prisons scattered throughout the state. Any man not headed to death row comes through on his way into the system.

Shelton is where decisions get made, where offenders with mental illnesses, behavior problems or, now, gang affiliations get noticed. And it’s where, Department of Corrections officials say, a recent reduction in prison violence has its roots.

Despite a hardening of state prison populations in recent years as the number of non-violent offenders in custody has fallen, prison violence rates have dropped to levels not seen since 2006.

Several of the state’s larger prisons have seen 20 percent decreases in the number of infractions issued for violent behavior during the past two years, according to Department of Corrections statistics. Only the state Corrections Center for Women at Purdy has seen a marked increase.

“We have less prison beds than we had two years ago,” said Dan Pacholke, acting director of prisons for the Department of Corrections. “We have less nonviolent offenders than we had two years ago. … We’re doing this at a time when the density of violent offenders is higher.”

Speaking at the Shelton prison, Pacholke credited new programs and tactics targeted at keeping staff and inmates safe.

Part of it has been soft — time with dogs and frogs, craft nights and extended visits with family. Part has been harder, including a move to segregate inmates by their gang affiliation.

Gangs and violence
Nelious Horsley knows gangs, and he knows violence. A corded scar rises from his clavicle up the left side of his neck. It traces the path cut during a Clallam Bay Corrections Center riot when another inmate shoved a 7-inch improvised knife into his right lung.

Since joining a Tacoma street gang at age 11, Horsley had been shot five times before he was stabbed at Clallam Bay. He’s a certain kind of lucky. Speaking during an interview arranged by the Department of Corrections, Horsley said he believes the new anti-violence initiatives are working.

While populating cellblocks with members of the same gang may make it harder for members to get out, he said he believes inmates can break away. In his experience, he said, prison staff is willing to listen if someone says they want out of the gang life.

Horsley said it took him 24 years to decide he was done with it. By the time he is done serving his time on his current gun and drug offenses — June 2011 at the earliest — he’ll have spent more than half his life in Department of Corrections custody.

“I lost my wife, my kids,” the 38-year-old said. “I lost everything.”

Like many of the 3,200 or so gang-involved convicts, Horsley was raised in the gang. Members were like family. There was a time he didn’t expect to leave them, and felt sure he’d spend the rest of his life in prison.

The idea that he should change came slowly. There was his cousin, another inmate, telling him he needed to do something else. There was his brother’s funeral, an event he missed because prison staff didn’t think he could safely attend.

Starting his current sentence — a five-year-maximum term for drug dealing and unlawful gun possession — he said he decided he was done with the gang. Since then, Horsley has joined a group of inmates called on to greet new arrivals at the Shelton facility, where he encourages them to move away from gangs and violence.

Horsley’s test will come when he gets out. It’s one he says he’s prepared to pass. “I’ve had two years of the good life, the legal life, so I kinda know what that feels like,” he said Wednesday. “It’s like I tell my class, once you give the legal life a shot and start feeling really good, it shouldn’t be that hard to go back and get it.”

Walking the block
Pacholke, the acting prisons director for the Department of Corrections, said he is more worried about the gang violence than the gangs themselves. Gang members behaving themselves don’t hurt his officers or inmates.

“I’m not as concerned about gang membership as I am about behavior in prison,” Pacholke said. “You can be a gang member, but if you’re a violent gang member then we’re going to more intensively manage you.”

When men like Horsley decide to make a change, Sgt. Alfred Smack is among the Department of Corrections employees they talk to. A 10-year veteran of the Department of Corrections and one who handles intake into the prison system at Shelton, Smack said staff has gotten better at hearing the whispers. There are no secrets in prison, he said, and staff has to know how to discretely talk to the inmates.

When inmates housed with their gang decide they want out, they’re “stepped down” into a less restrictive unit to see if they’re sincere, Smack said. If they behave, they get access to the programs and privileges that make prison more bearable.

Small concessions — a cheeseburgers or chicken nuggets for a cell block that doesn’t brawl, extra time with family for individual inmates — make a difference in prison. Smack said people who envision the movies or the HBO series “OZ” when they think of prison miss the variety.

At Shelton, there are gardens and barbed wire, GED classrooms and one-man cells with slits for windows. Mostly, though, there are bored men waiting in their cells. Some are mentally ill, some are weak and easy prey. Some are predators.

Walking through a “close custody” unit — meant to house offenders who don’t warrant solitary confinement but are judged too dangerous for medium security — Washington Corrections Center Superintendent Doug Waddington gets attention.

As he passes, stubbly faces pop into the glassless windows cut into steel doors. The men have questions for him — one man’s concerned about access to religious services, most just want to know what he’s up to. Waddington listens politely; He can spend hours in the blocks.

Elsewhere in the system, inmates raise dogs and frogs in an effort to rehabilitate them. Soon, some will be breeding butterflies. Shelton boasts more GED graduations than any other prison in the system, an achievement at a facility that keeps most inmates for about six weeks. There are also the small things like the arts and crafts night, where men are allowed to put join their children in the visiting room.

“It sounds goofy,” Waddington said. “It’s not really about building a birdhouse or something like that.”

What it is about, he said, is creating incentives for the inmates to behave. Beyond that, though, the superintendent said its about giving them a connection to life outside the prison, one that they can choose to support when — as nearly all Washington offenders do — they get out of prison.

The big prize in prison, as several offenders noted, is an extended family visit — a 21-to-45-hour stay in a one-bedroom trailer with family. Inside, inmates and their families get to cook their own food. They get to watch television. Parents get to put their kids to bed.

“It’s kind of a normal space in an abnormal setting,” Waddington said. “I think it humanizes this place.”

jchev Gangs (STGs), Washington

State prison officials have traced the genesis of a new gang to Tracy’s Deuel Vocational Institution. The Northern Riders first gained attention in 2000 when a founding member made a brazen declaration of war on a yard at Deuel. Officials today are determining if this group should hold rank among California’s established prison gangs. News from The Record.

If it started inside the Tracy prison, as officials suspect, it will become the state’s eighth documented prison gang and Deuel’s second in a little more than 50 years. The Mexican Mafia, one of the oldest and most notorious prison gangs, was the first spawned there.

The Northern Riders – a gang with an origin unlike others – went undetected for a time while prison investigators focused on more prominent groups.

“We didn’t think they’d materialize into anything,” said Special Agent Mike Brodie, a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation gang investigator. “We were wrong.”

So far, the Northern Riders has grown to 1,200 members throughout Northern California prisons. In a sweep last month at Deuel, officers confirmed 43 inmates as members, Chief Deputy Warden Ron Rackley said.

Brodie described the Northern Riders as a so-called dropout gang. It formed in reaction to the rigid Northern Structure and Nuestra Familia, related gangs that demand their members carry out commands from those further up in the hierarchy.

Unhappy with the politics of these established gangs, then-Deuel inmate Maurice Vasquez a decade ago walked onto a prison yard controlled by Nuestra Familia and began fighting several of its leaders at once, Brodie said.

“That was his declaration that the Northern Riders are up and running,” Brodie said, adding that its members operate more as a network than as a hierarchy and recruit members with the idea, “If you come with us, you don’t answer to anybody.”

He said its origin in reaction to other gangs makes it unique, because most band together for self-protection. The Northern Riders dominate special-needs yards at Deuel and other Northern California prisons populated by inmates who have dropped out of gangs, Brodie said.

While the list of street gangs in California is long, corrections officials recognize only seven that originated inside California’s prison walls, said Special Agent Michael Ruff, also a prison gang investigator with the Corrections Department.

According to Ruff, the Mexican Mafia started at Deuel in 1958. San Quentin State Prison was the birthplace of Nuestra Familia (1967), Aryan Brotherhood (1968), Black Guerrilla Family (1971) and Texas Syndicate (1973).

Nuestra Familia launched the Northern Structure (1983) at Folsom State Prison, but officials considered it a distinct gang. The Nazi Lowriders (1998) began in the California Youth Authority.

Stockton police Sgt. Rodney Rego, a gang investigator, said he’s aware of the Northern Riders, but the group has yet to be connected with any incidents in town.

State prison officials are well into a yearlong analysis of the Northern Riders to determine if it should be classified as a validated prison gang.

Once the analysis is complete, they will pass their information to headquarters in Sacramento, where top brass will make the final determination, Ruff said.

There is little mystery to why California’s crowded prisons continue to give rise to new gangs, said Barry Krisberg, a distinguished senior fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Criminal Justice.

Gangs have formed throughout history as a tool for powerless segments of a society to gain some control over their lives, he said. That explains warlords in Afghanistan, the Mafia in Sicily and inmates in California’s chronically overcrowded prisons, he said.

“What you have in prison is almost a hothouse,” Krisberg said. “We put together a large number of people who are generally powerless over their lives. … The gang gives them an alternative identity.”

jchev CA San Joaquin County, Gangs (STGs)

Pueblo’s gang problem is under a microscope. The Pueblo Community Gang Task Force recently formed and is gathering information and community wide participation to take a close look at gangs and alleviate the problem in Pueblo. Story in the Pueblo Cheiftain.

“One of the frustrations we have is, we have these (community gang) presentations, but once the presentations are over, we don’t move beyond that. The purpose of this task force is to move beyond that,” said the group’s chairman, Al Gurule, a longtime Chicano activist and owner of an East Side community corrections center.

Local law enforcement agencies including the district attorney’s office, probation and parole departments, the Pueblo Housing Authority and even Colorado State University-Pueblo have joined the effort to “extinguish” the local gang problem.

According to police, there’s an estimated 1,200 gang members in Pueblo.   The group meets monthly and has held two meetings thus far. Meetings are open to the public and Gurule said they’re recruiting other organizations.

Still in its infancy, what already has set this group apart from others is its size, organization and implementation of a research component.

“What’s different with this is we are using a research model to approach the problems,” Pueblo Police Chief Jim Billings said. “We’re not only spending time to identify the problem, we’re trying to use research methods to measure whether or not we’ve had success.

“Many times people come to the table with solutions already in mind to address a problem and that can be effective, but probably not as effective as truly using a problem-solving model where you clearly identify the problem you’re trying to solve and then explore all options out there.”

That’s why CSU-Pueblo criminology professor Chris Messer joined the team.

The task force is gathering information from local school districts and other organizations and agencies about gangs. The group is also looking at, among other data, poverty, crime and recidivism rates to help them form an overall picture of the problem.

It’ll be Messer’s job to chart and interpret the data.

“We’re dealing with numbers to some extent, but once we get that data, we hope to be able to measure those things,” Messer said. “Our biggest goal is for this to not just be some task force that just debates these issues without accomplishing anything in the end. I feel really strongly we can do that.”

Gurule uses a couple analogies in describing this group’s role in dissecting Pueblo’s gang problem.

Like a physician, he said the group wants to make an “MRI” of the gang problem and then, like an artist, step back from the individual brush strokes and see the whole picture.

“Once we see that total picture we want to come up with some tangible programs or new programs to extinguish that problem,” he said.

That may include helping other already existing programs in the community or later applying for grant money to establish new ones.

“It’s a pretty big job,” Gurule acknowledged. “Maybe we won’t extinguish it, but maybe we can minimize it and that’s definitely a step forward.”

jchev Colorado, Community Corrections, Gangs (STGs)

The following opinion piece by Jeanne Woodward and Matt Powers was published in the Sacramento Bee this morning:

Although the recent budget deal reached in Sacramento included a $1.2 billion cut to corrections, legislators haven’t yet faced the hard part: determining how exactly those cuts will be made. Democrats have promised to hammer out such a plan later this month. Now is the time to put the old maxims and myths aside and implement the policy changes needed to protect Californians and the fiscal health of the state.

Republicans say that they cannot approve cuts to prison spending that include the early release of inmates, saying this would be unfair and hurtful to victims. We do not doubt the sincerity of such concerns, but the truth is that our current criminal justice practices in California are costly and ineffective, and do not serve public safety as they should. Nor have legislators adequately addressed the trade-offs and how these negatively affect public safety. Take as an example the recent cuts to education, when we know that the more education young people receive, the less likely they are to be involved in crime, victimization and incarceration.

As the debate to cut prison spending heats up this month, the danger is that politics as usual will lead Sacramento to ignore this bigger-picture understanding of public safety. Criminal justice should stop being painted as law enforcement and conservatives on one side and liberals and correctional researchers on the other. There is nothing further from the truth. We are all interested in public safety. No one wants to be victimized by crime, and law enforcement officials and conservatives all over this state understand that we cannot arrest or incarcerate our way out of this problem. It is too costly and ineffective.

If we are truly interested in public safety, we must understand the great myth. It is a myth that the more people you incarcerate, the safer your communities are. As crime rates have fallen all across the country, study after study reveals that states that have implemented treatment and alternatives to incarceration have experienced greater reductions in crime and costs than states that have simply put more people behind bars for longer.

The state of New York, for example, experienced an 8 percent decrease in its prison population in 1995-2005 by boosting reliance on more cost-effective alternatives to incarceration, including drug treatment and community-based services. At the same time, the state recorded a large decrease in all crime categories, ranging from 43 percent for property crimes to a 47 percent drop in the homicide rate.

California has also had a reduction in crime rates – from 32 percent for property crimes to a 38 percent drop in the homicide rate in the same time period – but that drop has been accompanied by a whopping 28 percent jump in the prison population. Meanwhile, despite our reliance on prisons and incarceration as a response to crime, California continues to have the highest recidivism rate in the nation. California is now an example of what not to do.

A recent Northwestern Law study, “Controlling Corrections Costs in Illinois,” advises that, in deciding how to resolve corrections’ impact on the budget crisis, “the choice lies not between ‘left’ or ‘right’ but between East or West.” The author of this study urges Illinois to follow New York, not California, in developing criminal justice policy.

Fiscally responsible public safety, then, is not a liberal (left) issue, nor a conservative (right) one. It is not a Republican issue nor a Democrat one. It is a question of efficacy.

We must have criminal justice policies that hold people accountable for change. We must recognize that often the most effective criminal justice policy is treatment, community programs and community supervision. We must move our funding from prisons to community programs for non-serious, nonviolent offenders. This approach is cheaper and more effective in reducing victimization in our communities.

Violent offenders should go to state prison. These offenders must be held accountable to participate in treatment and refrain from gang activity before they are released. Now violent offenders are released when their time is finished even if they have continued criminal behavior inside our prisons.

We should not fear the release of 27,000 carefully selected, ill and petty offenders as a way of reducing the budget. We should fear continuing the broken, expensive correctional practices of today. California must stop being an example of what not to do. We should again be a state that invests in our children through education – not funding a prison system that gives us little in return.

If our legislators really care about crime victims, then we must follow the example of New York. Sacramento must establish policies that reflect a concern for Californians and public safety. The future of this state depends on it. Let us invest in our communities and see a return by reducing incarceration, crime and the recidivism rates through a criminal justice strategy that works.

Jeanne Woodford is the former director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and former warden at San Quentin; Matt Powers is a retired deputy chief of the Sacramento Police Department.

jakking California, Corrections History, Corrections Reform, Early Release, Economic Issues, Gangs (STGs), New York

Two of the District of Columbia’s top law enforcement officials are warning that dozens of federal prisoners with ties to Colombian rebel groups and international drug rings are a threat to security at the D.C. Jail and pose a risk of escape into the surrounding neighborhood, according to an article in the Washington Times.

The concerns have led city officials to ask the federal government for more money to provide security for the increasing numbers of prisoners, who are being held at the District’s corrections campus in Southeast.   Devon Brown, director of the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC), outlined concerns about such prisoners in a U.S. District Court filing last month. The June 18 filing was part of a federal court battle over prisoner housing between the city and attorneys for a group of Colombian inmates indicted as being part of a cocaine ring.   Mr. Brown said an “unprecedented number” of city inmates – 60 in all – are thought to have ties to a Colombian drug organization.   Such prisoners must be kept separate from each other and “could easily use their skills and resources to coordinate unrest, violence or escape,” Mr. Brown said …

D.C. Attorney General Peter J. Nickles confirmed that officials are concerned about possible dangers connected with housing the Colombian prisoners.   “I think it’s the question of dealing with folks who are connected to a larger organization, which has money and has abilities to bring to bear at the institution activities that would pose security problems,” Mr. Nickles said. “What started as a trickle has suddenly in the last few months become large enough that we’ve noticed it.”   He also said officials have asked “appropriate federal authorities” to provide the funds to protect against security risks.

There is a great deal more detail and background in the full article.

jakking Gangs (STGs), Washington DC

Learning about different cultures and upbringings would be one way to address the overrepresentation of minorities in the juvenile justice system and to address gang violence, presenters said Monday at the 10th annual Governor’s Conference on Juvenile Justice.  Reported by the Wichita Eagle.

Or as Mark Masterson with Sedgwick County’s Department of Corrections said on a video clip: “Diversity is a business imperative, not an option.”

More than 500 corrections industry professionals gathered at the Hyatt Regency in Wichita for the conference … Topics include things like access to records, preparing young people to make the transition from incarceration back to the community, and dealing with bullying.

Masterson’s session outlined how Sedgwick County is working to reduce the disproportionate number of racial and ethnic minorities in its system. The disproportion, he said, is particularly high at the arrest point.  In 2008, 78 of every 1,000 black youths were arrested for minor crimes compared with nearly 43 of every 1,000 Hispanic youths and 18 of every 1,000 white youths, according to presentation data.  Hiring diverse staff to better mirror the clients the system serves and holding staff trainings that consider race and ethnicity, social status, poverty, gender and other identifiers have helped the system become more culturally competent.

Understanding culture is also helpful when dealing with gangs, said Ruben Salamanca, of the Topeka Police Department, who is president of the Kansas Gang Investigators Association. Salamanca said Hispanic gangs are often territorial, and identify with certain geographic areas or neighborhoods, while black gangs are often motivated by money. White gangs, he said, are often motivated by feelings of racial superiority. In Kansas, he said, it’s not uncommon to see mixed-race gangs, too.  He discussed the importance of law enforcement understanding gang history dating back decades.  “People need to be more culturally competent about who they are and what they’re about,” Salamanca said.

jakking Gangs (STGs), Juvenile Justice, KS Sedgewick County, Kansas

Center County PA officials have applied to the state to house 25 prisoners at the county correctional facility.  The deal to help ease state prison overcrowding over the next two or three years would generate revenue for the county — $55 per day per prisoner, or $500,000 a year, enough to more than make up for a projected line-item shortfall.  Report from Center Daily.

But the potential arrangement also has raised concerns from Board of Commissioners Chairman Jon Eich about inmate gang members mixing with county inmates … “I’m concerned about gang presence — we hear that gangs are present in state prisons,” Eich said in a news conference after the commissioners’ regular meeting. “I don’t want to see Centre County inmates recruited into gangs” …

Commissioners Rich Rogers and Steve Dershem downplayed the concerns without dismissing them. They said discussions with state Department of Corrections officials would precede a decision by the Board of Commissioners. “We do have the capacity to isolate these folks if we need to,” Dershem said. “Do we have concerns? Yes. Have we made a decision yet? No. It’s an opportunity that we’re looking at.”

Without the state prisoner revenue, the county is on a pace this year to bring in little more than half of what it budgeted for housing prisoners from other counties in Centre County’s 4-year-old, $20 million prison at the Benner Pike and Rishel Hill Road in Benner Township. The county took in $89,000 though April for housing other counties’ inmates, an annual rate of $266,000 against $510,000 expected in the budget line-item. Rogers said other counties have begun to find “creative ways” to avoid the expense of shipping inmates to other counties.

Read more: http://www.centredaily.com/news/local/story/1309376.html#ixzz0GnxFWVSP&B

jakking County-State Issues, Economic Issues, Gangs (STGs), PA Center County, Pennsylvania

Violent gangs are thriving behind New Jersey’s prison walls and the Department of Corrections isn’t doing enough to stop them, according to a report released today by the State Commission on Investigation.   Report from NJ.com.

Investigators said jails are like a “branch office” for gang members who are able to easily sell drugs, communicate by using smuggled cell phones and launder money with official inmate accounts. The report says that incarceration is not an obstacle to gang members, who are able to easily sell drugs, communicate using smuggled cell phones and launder money using official inmate accounts …

The SCI, a fact-finding agency that examines crime and corruption and which reports to the Legislature, recommended widespread changes within the Department of Corrections, including better oversight of inmate finances, reforming prison hiring practices and improving inspections to prevent smuggling …

Law enforcement efforts are succeeding in putting more gang members behind bars, the report said, but that has created new challenges for state prisons. “The growing influx of convicted gang members has transformed the prison system into a breeding ground for gang-related criminal activity at a level far more expansive than ever before,” the report said. Prison staff monitor inmate phone calls, read mail and receive some training on how to deal with gangs. But, the report said, it is not enough. “Those who manage and staff these institutions go to work every day in what amounts to a defensive holding action against worsening odds, and all too often, as they reach for practical tools to get the job done properly, they find the system lacking,” the report says …

According to the report, a top Corrections official believes up to half of all state prison inmates are involved with a gang, either by choice or through extortion. The SCI identified an East Coast chapter of the Bloods as the primary catalyst for criminal activity behind bars. During a November hearing, state investigators said the Bloods — which reportedly account for about half of all incarcerated gang members — exploit corrupt prison guards to smuggle drugs and other contraband. Shawn Williams, president of the National Alliance of Gang Investigators Association, said the biggest problem is the proliferation of cell phones, which allows inmates to circumvent monitored prison phones …

SCI Chairman Cary Edwards … said some problems can be tackled without more money, noting that the Department of Corrections’ investigative operations need fundamental restructuring. The division is responsible for both internal affairs and gang suppression, creating a toxic relationship with the guards needed for gathering basic intelligence, Edwards said. He also said police and prison officials need to do a better job sharing intelligence on gang activity.

jakking Data Sharing, Gangs (STGs), Inmate Telephones, New Jersey, Offender Information

New South Wales, Australia, prison officers say an Easter weekend outbreak of violence at Parklea prison is a prelude to further trouble in the state’s jails if the State Government privatises prison operations.  Story from the Canberra Times.

The Prison Officers Vocational Branch, the union representing officers, says private jail operators would not employ enough staff to contain the sort of incident that occurred last Friday, in which a group of inmates, allegedly bikies, attacked another prisoner during morning muster, reportedly using sharpened toothbrushes.

The Department of Corrective Services has downplayed the incident. It said only seven prisoners were involved, and only one inmate, Mesbah Mirzaei, who allegedly led the attack, was a member of the bikie gang Notorious.

jakking Australasia, Australia, Gangs (STGs), INTERNATIONAL, New South Wales, Private Prisons

The Heartless Felons, a new kind of prison gang, have brazenly broken away from the unwritten convicts’ code – no rapes, no robberies, no snitching, no group attacks – and raised tensions to alarming rates at the Mansfield Correctional Institution in OH, prison guards and officials say.  Report from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The gang formed in juvenile jails and now, slightly older but no less violent, members have migrated to the state prison system, where the Heartless Felons are wreaking havoc. The Felons, with other gangs stocked from Cleveland streets, have squared off several times against each other, increasing the tensions at the overcrowded state prison in Mansfield and raising concerns of another Easter riot.  Attacks in Ohio prisons have doubled since 2005, from nearly 500 then to more than 1,000 last year …

The Mansfield prison houses 2,475 inmates, though it was built for 1,536, a capacity rate of 161 percent. The prison nearly exploded March 20 when about 10 gang fights broke out.  The fights involved the Heartless Felons, the Up the Way gang and the Down the Way gang, the last two made up of inmates predominantly from Cleveland, prison officials said. In some fights, 25 gang members attacked each other. Guards and inmates suffered minor injuries …

Mansfield faces [familiar] problems of crowding and staff shortages, as the prison has 383 guards spread over four shifts. On a typical weekday afternoon shift, about 80 guards work the prison, creating a ratio as high as 30 inmates to every guard…

About 18 months ago, the prison began seeing a change when the Heartless Felons began filtering into Mansfield.

The [Heartless Felons] gang’s roots go back to the juvenile jails run by the Department of Youth Services, where the gang formed and battled for years with its rival, the Head Busters. As the Heartless Felons left the youth system and continued committing crimes, they were pushed to adult prisons … Older inmates – those in their 20s or early 30s – who tried to steer some of the gang’s 30 or so members away soon regretted it. The gang deals in intimidation, preferring six-on-one attacks, robberies and extortion. Its own bylaws indicate that its members will not fight one-on-one during attacks, guards said.

There is more detail and background in the Plain Dealer article.

jakking Gangs (STGs), Juvenile Justice, Ohio

Lancaster City CA officials are fighting the state’s plans to convert a local prison reception center into a long-term facility that could house up to 1,500 “sensitive needs” inmates.  Report from the Los Angeles Times.

The state’s proposal calls for housing hundreds of inmates who could be at risk living in the general prison population, such as sex offenders and former gang members. The new accommodations, located on the prison campus, would be equipped to provide ongoing rehabilitative services. Prison officials said converting the transition center in Lancaster into a long-term facility is critical to addressing a statewide backlog of 1,500 “sensitive needs” inmates who need appropriate housing. They said the inmates need to be living in a regular prison yard where they can go to school and attend substance-abuse programs and other rehabilitation courses.   “It’s not just something we’re doing on a whim,” said Scott Kernan, undersecretary of operations for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “There is no other facility in the entire state system that could house this population” …

But Lancaster officials argue that the Antelope Valley is already home to some of the highest per-capita concentrations of parolees, juvenile probationers and federal Section 8 housing recipients in Los Angeles County. They fear that establishing a long-term facility for “sensitive needs” inmates would encourage more transfers from other prisons and make it easier for families and associates of inmates to visit or relocate to the valley.   Once released, the ex-convicts would probably choose to remain in the area, said Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris. “It’s a tremendous risk to the community,” he said …

The Lancaster prison is currently home to 4,800 inmates, according to the state corrections department. Of these, 600 are categorized as “sensitive needs” prisoners. Roughly 2,800 prisoners living in the reception center have yet to be classified.

jakking California, Gangs (STGs), Sex Offenders

Washington State is developing some promising new approaches to dealing with prison gangs, but its efforts are somewhat hampered by a lack of staffing, a recent study commissioned by the state said.

The study found prison “investigators are extremely understaffed and are in need of personnel dedicated specifically to (gang) intelligence and interdiction.”   That’s a result of the unprecedented state budget crunch, said Dan Pacholke, deputy director of the Department of Corrections prisons division.  “The timing couldn’t be worse,” he said Friday. “Our first priority is to maintain public safety and create an environment that reduces the likelihood that offenders will re-offend. We’re doing our best to make reductions outside of those things.”

At the same time, researchers lauded Washington’s “Step Down” program that rewards violent and often gang-affiliated offenders with lower custody levels for positive behavior. Among other measures, the department has started housing some rival gang members in separate housing units at its intake facility, Washington Corrections Center near Shelton. The practice led to a nearly 20 percent decrease in violence at the facility in six months, officials said …

Gang-affiliated inmates comprise about 18 percent of the 18,000-inmate population. The largest prison gangs are the Crips, whose members are primarily black and from the central Puget Sound region; the Surenos, a Southern California-affiliated Hispanic gang; and white supremacists.

The article in the News-Tribune has a good deal of operational detail.

jakking Gangs (STGs), Washington

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.

jakking Gangs (STGs), Utah

Colorado prison officials blame a stunning increase in violence and lockdowns on mushrooming gang activity and budget cuts that reduced programs to keep inmates out of trouble.   Corrections chief Ari Zavaras outlined statistics in a briefing to state lawmakers, as reported by the Vail Daily.

Prisons were locked down 148 times in the 2007-08 fiscal year, an 80 percent increase with 66 more lockdowns than in the previous fiscal year, Zavaras said.   Assaults by inmates on other inmates rose 19.5 percent and assaults by inmates on staff went up 11 percent, he said … “In the last eight years, the gang population increased by 85 percent while our inmate population only increased by 42 percent,” said prison spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti. More than 9,300 inmates of the total prison population of 23,000 are identified as gang members or affiliates, she said … Sanguinetti said efforts are made to keep rival gang members away from each other, but with such high levels of gang affiliation, “they are going to run into each other more frequently” …

The need for high-security cells will be addressed by a new prison in Canon City, but its completion has been delayed until fiscal year 2010-11 in a move to cut $17 million from the prison budget, Sanguinetti said.   “When the existing (maximum security) Colorado State Penitentiary opened, we had a 66 percent reduction in violence through the system,” she said. “We expect the same effect when the new one opens” …

Inmates also aren’t getting programs designed to change their behavior such as one in which staff took photos of prisoners that were printed and sent to inmates’ families.   Although it doesn’t seem like such a program would cost much, Sanguinetti pointed out “when you have 23,000 offenders, costs mount up.”   Inmate morale wasn’t improved by a cut in prisoner pay from several dollars a day to 60 cents. So-called gate release money given to inmates when they are released from prison has remained at $100 since the 1970s, Sanguinetti said.

One piece of good news:

Zavaras said, is the dramatic decrease in the number of prisoners entering the system.  About 32 inmates a month came into the system in the 2007-08 fiscal year, compared with the usual 100 a month, he said. So far this fiscal year, the number has dropped to 26 a month.   “It definitely is a hopeful trend,” Zavaras said. The overall prison population is expected to increase from 23,567 at the end of this fiscal year to 25,558 in 2021.

jakking Colorado, Gangs (STGs), Inmate Programs

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has taken a tour of Washington DOC’s new gangs unit in Walla Walla.

Robert Walker is four weeks into his housing assignment at the Washington State Penitentiary’s new gang unit, where he is serving 18 years for assault.  So far, he likes his new home, but the 21-year-old former gang member from Seattle doesn’t sense that he has any more freedom. “It’s cleaner and there’s less people,” he said. “The room is bigger, but you know…” Walker’s voice trailed off and he shrugged his shoulders at his surroundings – an open cell block offering officers an easy view of rooms from a central command post …

In an attempt to curb prison violence, largely among gang members, the prison has begun isolating problem inmates and gang members in pods to restrict their interaction with other inmates.  “Overall, because we’ve been able to manage the offenders in smaller groups – groups of 99 – we’re able to minimize the incidents,” said Steve Sinclair, prison superintendent.  Gang members make up 18 percent of Washington’s prison population of about 17,000 inmates, but they account for 43 percent of all major violent infractions inside the prisons, according to a report released last month by the state Department of Corrections.

The complete article at the Seattle PI is full of detailed information.

jakking Gangs (STGs), Washington

According to the 2009 National Gang Threat Assessment released by the National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC) and the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), approximately one million gang members belonging to more than 20,000 gangs were criminally active in the U.S. as of September 2008. The assessment was developed through analysis of available federal, state, and local law enforcement information; 2008 NDIC National Drug Threat Survey (NDTS) data; and verified open source information.

“Gangs have long posed a threat to public safety, but as this study shows, gang activity is no longer merely a problem for urban areas. Gang members are increasingly moving to suburban America, bringing with them the potential for increased crime and violence,” said Assistant Director Kenneth W. Kaiser, FBI Criminal Investigative Division.

Other key findings are as follows:

• Local street gangs, or neighborhood-based street gangs, remain a significant threat because they still constitute the largest number of gangs nationwide. Most engage in violence in conjunction with a variety of crimes, including retail-level drug distribution.
• According to NDTS data, 58 percent of state and local law enforcement agencies reported that criminal gangs were active in their jurisdictions in 2008 compared with 45 percent of state and local agencies.
• Gang members are migrating from urban to suburban and rural areas, expanding the gangs’ influence in most regions. They are doing so for a variety of reasons, including expanding drug distribution territories, increasing illicit revenue, recruiting new members, hiding from law enforcement, and escaping from other gangs. Many suburban and rural communities are experiencing increasing gang-related crime and violence because of expanding gang influence.
• Criminal gangs commit as much as 80 percent of the crime in many communities, according to law enforcement officials throughout the nation. Typical gang-related crimes include alien smuggling, armed robbery, assault, auto theft, drug trafficking, extortion, fraud, home invasions, identity theft, murder, and weapons trafficking.
• Gang members are the primary retail-level distributors of most illicit drugs. They also are increasingly distributing wholesale-level quantities of marijuana and cocaine in most urban and suburban communities.
• Some gangs are trafficking illicit drugs at the regional and national levels; several are capable of competing with U.S.-based Mexican drug trafficking organizations.
• U.S.-based gang members illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border for the express purpose of smuggling illicit drugs and illegal aliens from Mexico into the United States.
• Many gangs actively use the Internet to recruit new members and to communicate with members in other areas of the U.S. and in foreign countries.
• Street gangs and outlaw motorcycle gangs pose a growing threat to law enforcement along the U.S.–Canada border. They frequently associate with Canada-based gangs and criminal organizations to facilitate various criminal activities, including drug smuggling into the United States.

jakking Federal Systems, Gangs (STGs)

Two years ago, Maryland Corrections Secretary Gary D. Maynard gave prison and local police officials a simple task: draw up lists of the most violent gang members being held in state custody. With the House of Correction set to be shuttered, the worst of the worst would be transported to out-of-state facilities.

The agencies submitted a total of 220 names, but to Maynard’s surprise, only eight appeared on more than one list. The prisons didn’t know who the police thought were most dangerous, and the police departments weren’t sharing the information with each other, either.   “I told them that we have a gang problem in our prison, and I think it reaches into the street. It was a problem we shared,” Maynard said.  During the next few months, dozens of top state law enforcement leaders began meeting to discuss broader ways to share intelligence. Now they’re pushing for legislation in the General Assembly to define gangs, correctional training facilities have adopted uniform curricula to help track gangs, and beginning this month the prison system began using a formal system to notify a jurisdiction when an inmate with known gang connections is heading to their area.  Police will also share more information with the prison system, helping corrections officials get a leg up by receiving information that would take far longer to develop through observation. Keeping members of rival gangs apart can prevent violence …

Before the collaborative effort, prison officials had scant information about who was heading into their facilities.  “When people came into prison, we got a rap sheet that showed their conviction, but it didn’t really speak to violence, and says nothing about gang involvement,” Maynard said. “We had to learn by trial and error who the bad actors were” …

Public safety officials have said the state’s prisons house more than 2,200 “validated” gang members – inmates whose identity as gang members has been firmly established. That’s nearly 10 percent of the 23,000 inmates in Maryland. Kristen Mahoney, executive director of the Governor’s Office on Crime Control and Prevention, said gangs are “created in prison and leave prison and work out in the streets.”

The full article in the Baltimore Sun has more detailed information.

jakking Gangs (STGs), Maryland

Daryl A. Vigil, manager of the the Colorado Department of Correction’s high-security bed unit, has been elected the National Major Gang Task Force’s interim executive director with effect from February 1. The group’s HQ will move to Pueblo where the Vigil lives and works.

jakking Gangs (STGs)

Attorneys for the city of Los Angeles filed a lawsuit Monday seeking monetary penalties against nine imprisoned gang leaders, alleging that at least some of them continue to oversee their criminal enterprises from inside prison.

The defendants in the Los Angeles state court suit are reputed members of the Los Angeles-based 18th Street gang, which the suit calls “one of the largest and most violent criminal street gangs in the world” with an estimated 30,000-plus members in 15 states and five foreign countries.

In the past, prosecutors have filed criminal cases against imprisoned gang members for continuing to direct criminal operations from their prison cells. The Los Angeles City Attorney’s office says it believes this is the first suit that seeks civil monetary penalties for alleged damages to the public caused by such criminal activity. The city attorney’s lawsuit aims to take away any financial benefits the imprisoned gang members are enjoying from their alleged illegal activities, said City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo. “We’re going to hit them where it hurts, in their wallet.” City officials said they plan to seek damages of more than $1 million. If successful, authorities would then attempt to seize cash, homes, cars and other property connected to the defendants …

All nine have been in federal custody since at least September 2006, and two have been in prison since the 1990s with both now serving life terms, says Bruce Riordan, director of the city attorney’s anti-gang division. The two serving life terms, Ruben Castro and Frank Martinez, also are alleged members of the Mexican Mafia, a violent prison-based gang that law-enforcement officials say has long been involved in criminal activities inside and outside of jail.

The suit alleges that 18th Street gang members are “vertically integrated” with the Mexican Mafia and funnel criminal proceeds to jailed Mexican Mafia members through various means, including deposits into bank accounts that the men maintain at the prison. Prisoners can have individual bank accounts to buy sundries.

More on this from the Wall Street Journal

jakking CA Los Angeles County, Gangs (STGs)

When New Jersey  officials recently confiscated cell phones from prison inmates, they made a troubling discovery: Some inmates had not been flagged as being part of a gang, but their contact lists included names of known gang members.

The official tally of gang members in prison accounts for a fraction of inmates with gang ties, according to officials at the State Commission of Investigation, which is scrutinizing gang behavior in prisons. Inmates may have looser gang affiliations and display no overt sign of involvement. Others don’t go to prison as part of a gang, but are later forced to join for their own survival, officials say.  “The actual population of inmates that somehow affiliate with gangs is much larger than what the official numbers would seem to reflect,” said Lee Seglem, assistant director for the State Commission of Investigation, in a recent interview.  He said there are about 4,000 known gang members in New Jersey prisons, but there could be as many as 13,000 in all with some degree of gang affiliation.

The commission held a hearing in Trenton last week following a 20-month investigation that found gang members – particularly the Bloods – were exploiting vulnerabilities in state prisons. Officials testified inmates freely continued gang operations from behind bars by obtaining cell phones, drugs and money, aided by lax policies and corrupt staff members. Among the myriad issues investigators discussed was how gang members are made and identified in prisons. They found that not only are inmates sometimes forced to join gangs to avoid harm to themselves and their families, but county jails have inconsistent policies for flagging gang members, and the prisons and law-enforcement agencies are not sharing enough information with one another on their identities.  They plan to make recommendations in a report to be released early next year.

State prisons have screened for gang membership since 1996, according to Department of Corrections spokeswoman Deirdre Fedkenheuer. She said incoming inmates are checked for tattoos and gang-related paraphernalia, and prison officials also rely on outside law-enforcement agencies, county jails and, in some cases, the inmate’s own admission. Inmates flagged as gang leaders are sent to the Security Threat Management Group Unit in the Northern State Prison in Newark to undergo a program that, among other things, teaches alternatives to violent behavior, she said.

One major factor hampering the broader ability to obtain gang intelligence, officials testified at the SCI hearing, is the structure of each prison’s Special Investigation Division, or SID. They said friction exists between the SID and custody officials because the division’s responsibilities include both handling internal affairs – which can involve investigating employees – and gathering information on gangs from those same custody officials.

More operational detail in the article at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

jakking Gangs (STGs), New Jersey