National Database On Gangs Posed Texas Prison Officials Worried By Recruitment Among Inmates

Citing the proliferation of prison gangs - and their impact on both sides of penitentiary walls - the chairman of the Texas prison board said he wants to create a clearinghouse for information on gangs from coast to coast.

“Prison gangs are spreading outside the walls. They are no longer something we see exclusively in our prisons,” Chairman Allan Polunsky said during a Friday meeting of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice.

“We need to cut out this cancer before it spreads further,” he added.

In a one-hour presentation, an agency expert on prison gangs told the board that membership in Texas prison gangs has increased from 1,238 in 1991 to its current level of 5,034. During the same period, the prison population rose from roughly 51,000 to 143,000 inmates.

Besides the swelling prison population, officials point to the prevalence of street gangs as factors contributing to the rise of prison gangs. They note that street gang members, after they are convicted and sentenced to time behind bars, become easy recruiting targets for more established prison gangs.

“We have seen a tremendous impact of street gangs coming in … later recruited by prison gangs,” said Sammy Buentello, assistant director of the prison system’s 18-month-old gang task force.

“They take what they learn in prison back out on the streets with them,” Buentello continued.

That may have been the case in a recent homicide in the East Texas town of Jasper, when three men, two of whom were ex-convicts suspected of being affiliated with white supremacist prison gangs, were charged with dragging a black man behind a pickup. The man’s body parts were found strewn along a desolate road.

That incident prompted the board to take a closer look at the escalating ranks of prison gangs, Polunsky said.

The agency’s gang task force is charged with monitoring identified and suspected gang members in the agency’s 113 prisons. Officers track gang-related activity and share it with law enforcement authorities on the outside, who sometimes are able to thwart potential crimes with the data.

By creating a database on prison gang members, law enforcement agencies from across the country will be able to benefit from, as well as contribute to, intelligence efforts, Buentello said. He noted that many prison gang members in Texas units are from the Midwest and the East and West coasts.

Although he didn’t know how much it would cost to establish the database, Polunsky said it would be minimal. He expected the unit would be in place within 90 days.

Buentello explained that prison gangs are far more organized and dangerous than their street counterparts. Prison gang members take oaths for life, meaning they never are allowed to leave the organization once they are accepted into it. He said members also are expected to put the gang ahead of family and friends.