Ken at CrimLaw notes the convictions of several members of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. News reports here and here. A few dozen gang members, including very high-ranking Brotherhood leaders, were charged with murder, conspiracy, and racketeering; several of the prosecutions could lead to the death penalty. Ken also points to this item wherein some experts on prison gang culture express pessimism that these prosecutions will have any major impact on the Aryans as a whole. As one says, the gang is “like a hydra — you cut off a limb and it’s going to grow back.”
The news also prompted a couple of comments at TNR’s Plank here and here. One of those leads to this wonderful New Yorker article from a couple of years ago. The article discusses the history and scope of the Aryan Brotherhood, and discusses the early days of the prosecution that just scored its first convictions this week. I highly recommend it.
On the bigger picture, I’m not so pessimistic. I agree that the current prosecutions, even if they result in death penalties, won’t kill off the Aryan Brotherhood right away. But Joe Valachi and the French Connection and other early successes combating the Mafia didn’t shut down that entity either. It took laws like RICO and dedicated cops and prosecutors years and years to have a significant impact. Prison is such a different culture, with completely different incentives, that we’ll probably never be able to wipe out gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood. But the pessimists make it sound like it’s useless to even try. I’m not saying it should be Team USA’s Number 1 goal, but these convictions show that some gains are possible.
Over time, if they keep up the heat with these prosecutions, more and more members will flip, in an effort to see the sunshine some day. One major victory in the current prosecutions was to ensure that the Brotherhood leaders will face at least life sentences — some of them were going to be eligible for parole at some point. Reasonable minds can differ on the efficacy of the death penalty as a general deterrent, but it may be the only meaningful punishment for lifers who kill other inmates. I assume most of these now-federal inmates will end up in super-duper-max prisons, to limit their contact with other gang members.
Ultimately, I wonder if the best tactic for the government is to expand its aim beyond the prison walls. Drugs and money don’t occur naturally in prison: someone has to bring them in. These hardass gang members may not care about tacking another life term on their rap sheets; in fact, they may well be proud of it. But my guess is they’ll feel differently about their wives and girlfriends and mothers getting convicted for helping them. Obviously, some of the smuggling and message-passing happens through lawyers or gang associates, and they should be prosecuted too. And I believe that the “girlfriend problem” is a real and troubling side-effect of the modern drug war. But that term refers to (mostly) innocent girlfriends who get caught in the net because they don’t have valuable information to hand the government. It’s a different story if the wives are knowingly transporting the means and currency for murders and other gang activity into prisons (or on the outside to pay for inside activity, as the New Yorker piece relates). Prosecutors should of course also go after guards who turn a blind eye, or actively help. But if gang members don’t care about their own fate, maybe they’ll care more about what happens to the Aryan Ladies’ Auxiliary.