Competing for Control

Prisons are hazardous environments that affect not only the people held inside but also the surrounding communities and the staff who work there. In recent years, gangs operating behind bars have repeatedly drawn national news coverage. In 2013, a hunger strike in California drew more than 30,000 prisoners. Its organizers were members of Black, Latino and white gangs who were being held in solitary confinement under indefinite sentences. That same year, a recently released member of the 211 Crew gang shot and killed the executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections on his own doorstep. In Texas, a joint task force indicted close to 75 members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, and some of them were linked to the blowtorch removal of a gang tattoo, an incident that inspired an episode of the television series Sons of Anarchy. These cases are only a sample of why prison gangs matter so much to society.