International Journal on Criminology Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2015 | Page 64

Organized Crime Behind Bars
Secondly, these groups organize and manage the traffic upon which life inside
the prison is based. Everything has a price inside—both people and things. Almost
everything is in short supply, and every possession becomes an instrument of power.
The control of drugs, cigarettes, alcohol and sex by prison gangs confers far higher
authority than any legitimate governance.
Finally, communication with the outside world, largely facilitated by modern
technology, 186 but still working through intimidation and corruption, allows the
leaders of these gangs to manage their criminal “businesses” from the inside.
Tightly protected, these individuals have the best means of persuasion possible,
the choice between money and death, plata o plomo, according to the Colombian saying
from Escobar's time. It has led inexorably to the influence of prison life extending ever
farther beyond the prison walls into society at large.
A - Inside
Born in the prison world and enjoying a guarantee of sustainability, prison gangs
will prevail even in establishments where, in theory, security—control and
isolation—is strongest.
1 - Control of Prison Life
In all prisons in the world, any newcomer is immediately challenged and
judged. His behavior from the first moment will determine his entire sentence. He can
face up to it and fight, pay for protection, or become a slave. He may also be required
to provide “proof ” of his previous criminal activities, which will be carefully checked.
Unless he has proven support or his own means, the prisoner cannot hope to avoid the
dead weight of prison logic: he must either belong to an organization or be exploited
by it.
The prisoner with no gang membership or who cannot pay the price of his
protection becomes a slave. The only rule is that of the strongest. The need to seek
a place in the group and to submit to its “laws” is therefore an imperative; failure to
respect these carries only one penalty and that is death.
An anecdote may show the control that prison gangs are able to exercise and
the competition they engage in, one against the other. Ian Huntley, the killer of two
ten year old girls in Soham, near Cambridge, England, was sentenced and imprisoned
in December 2003. In May 2004 a rumor was heard that he had become the subject
of a competition between two prison gangs. The winner was to be the gang who
executed him after disfiguring him by scalding, as an expression of contempt. Bets
were widely placed at Wakefield Prison, passions raged about which of the two gangs
would win. According to a prisoner interviewed by a newspaper (one wonders how),
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See box “Mobile phones and prisons.”
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