White Supremacist Prison Gangs in the United States | Page 4

even has one member based in France.
The largest white supremacist prison gangs may have members across the country, on the streets or behind bars. If
behind bars, members will typically be classified by prison officials as a security threat group member and thus the state
may register that gang as a presence in the state. However, the presence of one gang member, or even a few, in a prison
or prison system does not mean that the gang has an organized, functioning presence in that prison system.
ADL’s inventory tries to document states other than the originating state in which gangs have formed a substantial,
organized presence—but not all states in which one or more members may merely reside. This is another area where the
preliminary inventory may be inaccurate in analyzing the extent of a group’s presence in other states, either by overestimation or underestimation.
White supremacist prison gang nomenclature can also add confusion to the process. For example, multiple gangs have
emerged in different places at different times with names such as “Crazy White Boys,” “Dirty White Boys,” “White Aryan
Resistance,” “Fourth Reich,” and the like. It is not always possible to know if a “Crazy White Boys” gang in one state is
related to a gang of the same name in another state.
Perhaps the largest source of confusion over racist prison gangs involves the Aryan Brotherhood, which is often mistaken
or confused—especially by the media—with a large number of other gangs that have a similar name. Some clarification is
thus required.
The original Aryan Brotherhood began in the California prison system and soon expanded into the Federal Bureau of
Prisons. Although Aryan Brotherhood members can be found elsewhere, it is within these two prison systems that the
Brotherhood is primarily active. References in the media to the “Aryan Brotherhood” that may occur outside of California
or the federal prison system are highly likely actually to refer to some group other than the original Aryan Brotherhood.
Beginning in the 1980s in states such as Ohio and Texas, other white supremacist prison gangs emerged that adopted or
appropriated the term “Aryan Brotherhood,” typically with a state designation attached, such as the Aryan Brotherhood
of Texas. This practice spread as gangs themselves spread, with the result that many state prison systems now contain
such a group (the Alabama Aryan Brotherhood, the Mississippi Aryan Brotherhood, the New Mexico Aryan Brotherhood,
and so on). These gangs are not part of the original Aryan Brotherhood; they are not chapters or offshoots. They are
completely independent groups that happen to have a very similar name.
Complicating things still further is the fact that individual inmates may actually claim an Aryan Brotherhood status unilaterally. It is unwise to make such claims in prison systems with an actual Aryan Brotherho