INTOLERANCE: Gangs rule prison life

Discussion

April 23, 2008

By Jason M. White The Herald Bulletin Wed Apr 23, 2008, 11:28 PM EDT

In the Michigan City prison, the black inmates sit on one side of the cafeteria, and the white inmates sit on the other side.

Crossing over can result in a brawl, which is exactly what Anderson resident Jeffery Cottrell, who is black, was caught in the middle of while serving time about 10 years ago.

A black inmate walked to where the white inmates were eating, and the white inmates started a fight with the man. This escalated into a massive riot that prison guards rushed to suppress.

“I hid under the table when the rubber bullets started flying,” said Cottrell, who is now program director of the Urban League in Madison County.

Race-related violence and discrimination are no more or less common in prisons than society as a whole, said Kojak Fuller, an Anderson resident who served time in the Wabash and Plainfield prisons. Fuller was a basketball star at Anderson High School and was Indiana’s Mr. Basketball in 1993. He is now doing work in Anderson for Man 4 Man Ministries, which works with convicted felons.

Gangs form in prisons just as they do in cities and towns, mostly because inmates were already part of a gang before being incarcerated, said Lyna Tresley, director of operations and support services for the Indiana Department of Correction.

“There’s all sorts of groups,” she said. “The white supremacists, religious groups, the whole gambit.”

Sometimes prison violence occurs because of other perceived differences.

For instance, at the New Castle Correctional Facility in April 2007, prisoners who had been transferred from Arizona rioted because they felt they had fewer privileges in the Indiana facility and were not being treated as well as the Indiana prisoners.

Prisons are segregated based on security levels and not race, Tresley said. The lowest risk offenders are placed together, and the highest risk offenders are housed together.

But gang members tend to stick around one another just like in society, Fuller said.

Members of the same gang will work out with each other, eat together or play cards, he said. They form a support group for security and financial reasons.

But when it comes to making money, race is not important, he said.

For example, if a member of the Aryan Brotherhood can make money by selling tobacco to a black man, he will, Fuller said.

Race-related discrimination and race-related violence does happen though.

Gangs do not typically target gangs of other races, Fuller said. But an individual might pick a fight with another individual, and both might be members of different gangs, who would protect their members, he said.

Distinguishing what acts of violence are motivated by race can be difficult, said Bob Blume, executive director of Man 4 Man, a ministry that works with convicted felons.

Inmates fight over the same things other people do: Disagreements, greed, selfishness, jealousy and other emotions, he said.

Prison officials do not like to let the public know these problems exist, said Bruce MacMurray, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at Anderson University. A large portion of society wants a prison to take care of its business as quietly as possible, he said.

“It’s often the informal duty of administrators to keep a lid on those things,” MacMurray said.

Gangs are carefully monitored by prison personnel, Tresley said. They are not allowed to recruit.

Various prisons, such as the one in Pendleton, use educational programs to try and modify inmates’ behavior, Blume said.

For example, the Pendleton penitentiary uses the Plus Program, which is a faith-based program designed to help inmates cope with various issues.

These programs give inmates an outlet to express themselves so they do not have to resort to violence, he said.

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