David Skarbek interviewed at Asterisk:
Asterisk: I wanted to start by asking you about your work on prison gangs in California. How did these gangs come to be?
David Skarbek: Gangs play a dominant role in the California prison system and have a big impact on the day-to-day life of people working and living within them. But that hasn’t always been the case.
California had prisons for more than 100 years with no prison gangs. But today, when someone enters prison in California, they have almost no choice but to affiliate with racially segregated groups that operate under umbrellas of larger, more established, and very powerful prison gangs. And these gangs provide rules on how people can interact in social and communal life, as well as regulating the underground economy.
Now, the vast majority of people who affiliate or align with Hispanics in Southern California prisons are not actually members of, say, the Mexican Mafia. And that holds true across each of most of these traditional, notorious prison gangs — there are relatively few people in charge of things. But because of their control of prisons, they’ve been able to leverage a credible threat of violence that generates a tremendous amount of power and influence, both within prisons but also among those dealing drugs outside of prison.
More here.
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