White Supremacist Prison Gangs in the United States | Page 3

A Preliminary Inventory of White Supremacist
Prison Gangs
Using the Preliminary Inventory
ADL’s Center on Extremism has compiled a preliminary inventory of white supremacist prison gangs active in the United
States today. This is a harder task than one might think. It is complicated by the presence of such gangs both behind bars
and in the free world and even more complicated by the fact that there are 50 different state prison systems, the federal
prison system, and a great number of large county jails, all with their own regulations and classification systems.
In fact, there is not even agreement among prison officials as to what constitutes a prison gang. Some states only count
very large groups as gangs (referring to smaller groups as “cliques” or other terms). Other states only count as prison
gangs those gangs that emerged in prison, as opposed to gangs that originated on the streets then later moved into a
prison system—even if they are stronger behind bars than on the streets. Moreover, a number of state prison systems
have created generic or “catch-all” categories for certain types of white supremacists—or even all white supremacists.
So, for example, in one prison system many white supre