Why We Have Prison Gangs—Asterisk

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interview

Why We Have Prison Gangs

David Skarbek

America’s prison gangs first emerged in the late 1950s. Why did they form? What keeps them going? And how do they govern themselves?

Asterisk: I wanted to start by asking you about your work on prison gangs in California. How did these gangs come to be?<br>David Skarbek: Gangs play a dominant role in the California prison system and have a big impact on the day-to-day life of people working and living within them. But that hasn’t always been the case.<br>California had prisons for more than 100 years with no prison gangs. But today, when someone enters prison in California, they have almost no choice but to affiliate with racially segregated groups that operate under umbrellas of larger, more established, and very powerful prison gangs. And these gangs provide rules on how people can interact in social and communal life, as well as regulating the underground economy.<br>Now, the vast majority of people who affiliate or align with Hispanics in Southern California prisons are not actually members of, say, the Mexican Mafia. And that holds true across each of most of these traditional, notorious prison gangs — there are relatively few people in charge of things. But because of their control of prisons, they’ve been able to leverage a credible threat of violence that generates a tremendous amount of power and influence, both within prisons but also among those dealing drugs outside of prison.

Jan Robert Dünnweller

A: Before the 1950s or so, as you’ve written about, this just wasn’t the case. Gangs didn’t exist. Prisoners weren’t “governed” — instead, they had a code which was mostly enforced by decentralized reputational mechanisms.<br>D: Absolutely. Before gangs took root, norms of good behavior were pretty well understood among inmates. It was clear when someone was following them and it was clear when someone wasn’t. People could individually choose to punish violations or not. That worked really well, but only in relatively small, relatively homogenous communities where there was a lot of agreement about what constituted a deviation. Reputation mechanisms were very effective only when prisons were small enough that you cared about your reputation because lots of people knew who you were and whether you were in good or bad standing.<br>But as prison populations in California grew through the ’50s and into the ’60s, it became too costly to know everyone’s standing. Reputation became a much less effective driver of behavior. And in the process of becoming less effective, we begin to see a lot of outbursts of serious acts of violence. During the ’50s and ’60s, there were large increases in homicides, stabbings, and riots. And it’s during this turbulent time when the first prison gangs emerge — initially simply for self-protection. But then once gangs are able to effectively protect themselves, it creates incentives for them to engage in a variety of different behaviors.<br>A: Can you say more about how these gangs actually function? If you’re an incarcerated person, how do they structure your life in prison?<br>D: I think most importantly is that when someone is new on a yard, the shot caller — either the gang leader himself or one of his colleagues — will go out and basically run through the rules: who holds the keys, who is in charge, how should you behave, and maybe the current state of politics. “This is the person who holds the keys to the yard. They’re the one who’s in charge.”<br>And then you’re going to program with them. That means, assuming you’re in good standing, you might work out with the gang, you might be tasked with doing certain jobs or activities for them, or maybe you just hang with them. That’s the primary way that gangs will guide you and put guardrails on what is and is not acceptable behavior.<br>A: An interesting implicit corollary here is that the thing that we think of as prison governance — prison guards and correctional officers — doesn’t sound like a major factor in maintaining order. Where are the correctional officers in all of this?<br>D: I would say it’s not that they don't matter, it’s that they don’t provide the totality of the governance in a way that many of us would assume. Guards of course regulate the perimeter and are responsible for preventing contraband and things like that from coming in. They will also quell large-scale disruptions — through tear gas, etc. And they will investigate assaults and homicides that happen inside prison. So they do govern in all of these ways.<br>But it’s clear that they don’t govern in their official capacity when it comes to daily social interactions. And then of course, when there are any disputes associated with the underground economy, those are also outside of the purview of officials. But those are two big, big parts of life in prison. That’s where gangs have the more dominant role in governance.<br>A: Riots, murders, and assaults in prisons have all been declining...