 Okay. Where do we go from here? We have a... Okay. Sorry, I'm talking to my director at the same time. Let me put this fax question out to the panel. What kind of innovative supervision techniques are officers using to uncover gang activities, clubs and associations of offenders on supervision? Surveillance? Absolutely. Surveillance. Something I don't know if we've really touched upon it today is your law enforcement sources in the community. I mean, you really have to rely on them what's going on in each of the communities. We have an expert in Jersey City that we use quite often, just for identification purposes if nothing else, and he's identified clubs, hangouts, businesses, you name it, that are definitely related to Asian gang members in one way or another, and we've used that individual or had him on call for association-type violations in court as an expert witness. Okay. I just can't emphasize that enough, network, network, network. There are so many groups out there, and you can't be an expert on every one of them. But somewhere out there, there is somebody who knows something about them. It's just the matter of networking and finding out what these sources are and using broad based sources for your information. You know, Point Victor's made to me before, and it's always stuck with me. You really need to weed through those sources just because someone went to a gang seminar for a day or two, doesn't make him or her an expert on the gangs. That reminds me, I was in law enforcement, that the common thing was you go to a special training seminar for a week, you come back now and you're the expert in the field, you know. It's a good point to make. We've got a caller from New York. Hello. Hello. Welcome. Yes. What's your question? Okay. Are there any available lists of known members or associates of gangs? This list would serve the releaseee as a list of official notice of persons with whom he may not associate. Okay. Do you want to, Rachel, do you want to jump in there? I'm not sure whether your local law enforcement has it. I know our local law enforcement Atlanta has a gang computer system where they enter this data and they can pull up the gang that you're talking about, give you names and generally pictures of everybody that they have associated with that gang. I don't know that there is specifically like a nationwide network where you could just, you know, put in a gang name and it would tell you everybody that was in the gang. But definitely I would start with your local law enforcement in the community where that gang appears most active or where your defendant lives. Talk to SIU. If there was a list of separatists from the institutions, you know, making known to that individual when he's released, they look, you can't associate with these people once you're released. They've been identified as gang members relative to your activity. New York, I appreciate your call. I know I saw the facts with the same question. So thanks for taking the time. Did that answer your question? Yes, it does. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. I know we've got a caller on hold, but I've got a fax question from the Southern District of Texas and it looks like we'll go to Dale and Craig to see what we can pick their brains about here. Craig, probably going to you here. What percentage of gangs within the BOP system is made up of organized foreign gangs, Nigerian, Colombian, Asian, et cetera? I'm not sure I could give you the actual percentage off the top of my head, but I can definitely confirm that we have everything from Israeli mafia to Russian mafia to Nigerian organized crime to various organized crime groups out of the Caribbean, various Jamaican posse groups and also out of Dominican Republic and all that. So we certainly have a sizable representation. That's also true of Southeast Asia. I think we already talked about some of the very specific groups, ghost shadows, born to kill, things like that. So from the top of my head, I'm not sure if I could give you a percentage, but it would be a significant representation. And just a general comment about pure prisons that isn't often known and understood, one out of every four inmates or 25% of our population. We are foreign nationals, so we are going to have foreign representation in our various gangs. Good point. Let me, we have a second question on this fax and it looks like it might go back to our officers here. Again, an issue with female gangs. Are they on the increase, obviously based on your experience? And here's kind of an interesting twist. Are they more dangerous because I guess the thinking is because they are female gangs, they need to prove themselves. So first part of it, do you think they're on the increase? And again, just use your- I couldn't specifically tell you if they're on the increase, but I can tell you that they can be more dangerous to rival gang members. Because they can lull them. I think there's been some incidents, and I think it was in Minneapolis maybe. And when you say rival gang members, do you mean male gang members? Right, they use them to set them up. They'll use the female gang members to lure the rival gang members to a particular place where they'll be killed. Or in this instance, I believe they did the killing themselves. And this is, is this the auxiliary situation we're talking about before? In this case, right. Where one gang is using part of their female offenders. Right. Okay. Okay. Anybody else seen an increase in female gangs in there? I can't say for sure we have or haven't. Okay. Do you have them? That you know? I would say, as Dale or Craig said earlier with the Latin Kings, you'd definitely say it with them. And we're seeing more and more of that in New Jersey now. Okay. Our call from Phoenix. Thank you for holding. What's your question? Hi, Mark. This is Pam Cider from Phoenix, and I actually have a two-part question. The first part for Craig and Dale is, what steps has the BOP taken with ISU to gather information on juvenile gang members? I ask this because specifically in Tucson, we have a lot of juvenile gang offenders convicted under federal law for gun offenses. Well, ordinarily, the federal bureau of prisons is not going to have juvenile offenders in custody. There's been a few exceptions, most notably down in Guenabo, Puerto Rico, where we did accept some juvenile offenders in a very narrow program down there. We're talking three, four, five inmates at a time. But ordinarily, the federal prison system does not have juvenile offenders. But because many of the gang structures have a whole range of demographics where they have tiny gangsters and all the way up through original gangsters and whatever, certainly the information that we gather might be valid for some of the younger members of the gang. We may along the way learn about younger CRIPs or younger members of other gang organizations. So we don't directly collect on juvenile gangs, but still our holdings might include information that might refer to activities by juvenile members of gangs. Okay. Binks, is that the first part of your question? Does that take care of that? Yes, it does. Okay, what's the second one? The second part goes right to Victor. We want to know if he has any ideas how to network better with the Southwestern District. The Southwestern District? Yeah. Because a lot of us share similar gang information between Texas, California, and Arizona. Is there any kind of ideas you have how these officers could better network our intelligence information? Well, first of all, check around to see what gang investigators' associations are around. For example, in Texas, we have the Texas Gang Investigators' Association, and many of our officers that are on our high-risk unit belong to this association. So that gives a kind of a panoramic view of what's going on across the state. One of the things that we really need to do is we need to get our special offender specialists kind of to talk to each other, especially on a regional basis. For example, in our El Paso Division, there's some pretty specific gang issues there that are probably more pertinent to New Mexico and Arizona than there are to us in San Antonio. But we do need to really have more dialogue on a regional basis. Thank you. That does answer the question. I think Victor makes a good point there, because in New Jersey we should be having regular contact with Eastern and Southern New York all the time, our special offender specialists, and then into Philadelphia with our Camden officer, who I think does a real good job of communicating with them. I think in the Northern part we have to do a better job of that. Okay. Phoenix, I think I lost you, but again, thank you for your two-part question. I appreciate it. Craig, I've got facts that came in from Sacramento that's several questions. I can't promise we'll get to all of them, but let me run a few of them by you. In the process of transferring an inmate from the institution to a halfway house, how does the SIS play a part in reviewing the CCC referral? Well I think it would have a lot to do with whether the inmate was a member of a security threat group or not. If he was just a member of the general population and functioning normally, programming normally, the SIS may not play a major role. On the other hand, if he's a member of a security threat group or in the extreme a validated member of a disruptive group, then there would be a great deal of intelligence that would be available. So as they prepare the transfer package, the SIS often would contribute various information about the various incidents the inmate might have been involved in, various threat characteristics. Sometimes there might even be some officer safety issues. So if he specifically was STG or in the extreme case a member of a certified disruptive group, then certainly the local case manager at the institution would have that information ordinarily available to them as they prepared a transfer package, whether it was to a halfway house, another institution, or whatever the case may be. Okay, let me follow up with an additional from this fax and then we're going to go to our caller from Los Angeles. Craig, how can the information that the SIS at the facility reach the CCM to assist in placing an inmate at a CCC? There's a lot of acronyms in there. I know you understand what they mean. Well, one of the issues might be in terms of what's available to the CCM via Sentry, and again I'm using jargon that's very specific to our agency, Sentry is our online computer system that we use to identify inmate's current location and whatever. There's a facility on Sentry called a security threat group selection category, STG category, and among the other things a CCM can do is request access to that STG category on Sentry which would show them member, suspects, associates, and whatever and would have some intelligence available to them that way. In addition, the transfer package should have information attached to it if they look at an inmate and realize that he's a member, a suspect, an associate of a group and they didn't receive as much information as they might have anticipated. They could certainly call the SIS at the institution or as we've stressed on a number of other issues work through SIU because SIU is going to have a good thumbnail sketch of the inmate in terms of his gang activity, his associates, the threats he might pose whatever. So either one or both would be very responsive to what the CCM might need. Okay. Thanks for that, Craig. You've got a caller who's been on hold from Los Angeles. Thanks for your patience. Hello? Hello. Hi. What's your question? This is Lee Overley, Central District, California, and first of all, I'd just like to say I appreciate this conference because I think the gang situation will be a matter of going concerned on the federal system. And what I have done on a monthly basis, I attend meetings with a number of different law enforcement agencies, state and local, where we discuss gangs and have speakers and all. And what I find is that there's some pretty scary things coming out of those meetings. For example, learn that whereas we validate gangs or gang members and have them maybe computerized, found that the gangs themselves also have law enforcement personnel in their computer system and have them identified as gang suppression type law enforcement officers. And some of them are very worried due to the fact that there has been some contracts according to them put out on some of these officers. So my question is, do you find any of this thus far as probation officers, any problems in that area, or do you think there will be, and if so, would it be a thing we can do about it? Okay. Quest, let's go to that. Well, just generally be aware that some gangs, some groups do counterintelligence. Don't. Just having to aware that that could happen. Yeah. And when you say counterintelligence, again, just let's sort of... Well, sometimes called doing a CIA, that means maybe following you home or checking you out a little bit. So as officers are doing intelligence on these folks, these gang members are also checking out the officers. What kind of vehicles do you drive? What are the GSA cars? Which are the GSA cars? So it's kind of... And don't slip up in general conversation with these people either, and don't talk about your family. It's not their business. That's not what they're there for. Take the pictures down of the wife and the kids. Okay. All right. I've just been told that through the good graces of the satellite company, we have now till 3.30 to get the rest, hopefully the rest of this question. So if you're waiting to get online for a live call in, again, please take advantage of it. We're still with you. And we still have a few more fax questions that we want to get to as well. Okay. Fax question again. Do they believe, they meaning all of you guys here, that gang members are being actively recruited while in custody? Yes. Definitely. Ah, not a confirmation all the way around. Not only are they being recruited in custody, they're being recruited on the streets all the time. It's a never-ending process, but it's a two-way street, too. Not only are gangs recruited in new prospects, new prospects are looking at gangs. They're looking at gangs for various reasons, for lack of family ties and what have you. Two-way street. That's why they're called prison gangs. Right. They are, they, most prison gangs, there's a pattern that they start in prison and eventually they transition into the community, but they're generally prison-spawned gangs. All right, we've got a caller from Kansas City. Hello, Kansas City. You there? Hello. Hello, Kansas City. How are you? Great. Good. Welcome. I have a question. Have you noticed any predictable patterns of retaliation by the gang members or gang families to the PSOs, USTOs, to the courts, and recognizing their counterintelligence for, for density for violence? Do they entertain behavior like liens on personal property? Anything of that type? Okay. Anybody here? I can't speak of specific examples. I can only speak of one incident, and I'm really not going to elaborate too much, where a particular prison gang, it was a prison gang member made some threats and actually came into the federal courthouse in San Antonio with a weapon. Okay. Craig, Dale, any comments on that question? Yes, we've had experiences with the militia type, white supremacists, we'll put common law liens on, you know, on not probation officers, but on different people. So yes, they do do that, and like Victor was saying, the CIA investigations and backgrounds and that type of thing. Okay. Okay. I just got a fax, and by the way, Kansas City, does that answer your phone call? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get back to you. Yes, it did. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. I apologize for not making sure that we clarify or put closure to your question. I hope we did. I got a fax from Ruben Mason in Texas Southern, and there's a little note I'll share with folks. Could you please answer our question? We have a large crowd patiently waiting. So here we go. We often include brief paragraphs that a defendant's siblings, immediate family, has a prior record in the PSI. If we do the same, if a defendant's sibling is in a gang, even though the defendant is not, this of course is if the ID has been validated that the sibling is in a gang. Hope I read that correctly, Texas Southern. That's a matter of district, what your district wants to do. My main concern would be that the information be available for the officer that is going to supervise the case when the offender eventually gets out to the community. Again, you're talking about officer safety issues. Sure. If it's stricken from the pre-sentence report, if you do try to include it. Make a brief chrono. Right. And get some communication between the two units. Okay. Texas Southern, I hope we got to it okay. I hope you're happy with the answer and that there's a sigh of relief all around down there. We've got a caller. We're going back to Richmond. Hello, Richmond. Richmond, you there? Yeah. Actually, this is from Las Vegas. Las Vegas. Okay. Pretty close to Richmond, is it? Thank you. I have two quick comments and one question. Okay. Go ahead. A comment on officer safety. First of all, I would encourage all the participants not to be afraid to ask who resides in the house. It's your brother, your sister on probation, get IDs, and so on, and really find out who's there before doing a home visit. Now the second comment is on risk control. Many of gang members have not been identified in the past and have asked for a lot of travel permits across the country. Take the extra step, find out why they're traveling, who they're going with, and so on. That's really, really important because there's a lot of probation officers that are supervising special offenders without really knowing it. And the question for the presenters is what size or are you dealing with gangs that are Native American gangs? That's the question. Good question. Thanks, Las Vegas. Hold on. Native American gangs? We have no experience with Native American gangs in my district. None in New Jersey. Nope. Let's get to Craig and Dale and Native American gangs, guys. Well, a comment I would make in the Bureau of Prisons, when we're asked about Native American gangs, I think people are anticipating us coming up with some kind of Indian word or Indian term describing a gang. What we actually have among our Native Americans in custody are members of the Black Anxious Disciples, the Crips, the Bloods, the Latin Kings, the other gangs that you see. So, yes, we definitely have Indian members of gangs, but frequently they're emulating or copying other gangs out in the community. And sometimes, successfully, where, for instance, a Crip Faction or whatever might be very similar to a Crip Faction you might find elsewhere, sometimes they'll be in name only and be very unique to the reservation, but there's been relatively few gangs that we've experienced that were truly unique to the Native American culture. Now, we have had special interest groups, American Indian movement, and groups like that that I would not classify as a gang. But ordinarily, we see gangs that look very much like you'd expect to see in Chicago or Los Angeles or whatever, but operating on the gang, on the Indian reservation with the same name and some of the same characteristics. So, yes, we definitely see Indian gang members in custody. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Las Vegas, for your phone call. Another facts question coming from Chicago, Craig, this will probably go to you. Would BOP send the completed validation form to the supervising PO? I think we'd have to look at that. We'd probably abstract from it, provide all the information. We consider the form itself sensitive. I think what we'd like to do is talk with the supervising individual out in the community and go over their special needs and go over everything on it, what they might need and send them elements of intelligence from it. My instincts are that we may want to protect the form itself because of some sensitivities, but do a lot of sharing of the various individual elements, and in some cases the intelligence that supports it. So maybe not a fax or a Xerox copy as such, but significant portions of the intelligence that would be useful to them. Okay. One question on this fax, and this is, does the FJC or the BOP know of websites for different gangs? Let me just jump in. I've done just a basic, like a Yahoo or a Lyco search on the Internet when we first started researching this and was able just to start finding listings of these folks. Craig, do you guys keep lists of these websites as well? Well, the one thing I think that you need to understand about the Internet when you're looking at websites, the thing that amazes me how quickly the sites come and go where I might get on there and be fascinated by a website for Larry Hoover and the Black Anxious Disciples and then go back a few days later or a week when I have more time to spend some time looking at it and find that the particular site might not be there anymore. But yes, we can definitely confirm that Black Anxious, for instance, have had websites. I believe I've seen some Latin King websites, I've seen very specific information about the various gangs, and on occasion when you get into some of the other groups, you might find opposing groups having information on there about a gang, where they are providing information about it, but definitely see more and more activity on the Internet regarding the gangs. Okay. Thanks, Craig. We've got a caller patiently waiting from Pittsburgh. Hello. Hi. I have a question as to whether or not any type of evaluation is being done on supervising gang members once they are eventually released from the prison system. As you know, we're putting quite a number of these people away for very long periods of time, and we're curious as to whether this issue has been looked at. Good question. I don't know if anybody here would be in position. Craig, Dale, anything on that? There's some academic studies that have been done as far as gang members that have released. I don't know anything specific. I think University of Chicago, George Knox, has done some work. I'm trying to think that Russ Curry, there's several from the academic side, and that's where I would look for that information. Also, through NIJ, National Institute of Justice, the Research Center, you may find something there. I'm just not familiar with the documents. Pittsburgh, does that help at least? Yes, it does. Thank you. Thank you for your call. Let's get to a fax, and then we've got Cincinnati waiting in the wings. What is the success rate, getting a little punchy here, guys. What is the success rate of gang members being rehabilitated, and are there any community-based organizations that help gang members in their rehabilitation? We talked about the success rate earlier when we got into the treatment issues, and there was sort of a resounding or collective, no, we really don't have a lot of success treating these folks. How about the organizations? I don't have any statistics about the success rate. I wouldn't think there'd be any higher success rate than with our ordinary case load, probably lower success rate. I don't know of any organizations in Nebraska that particularly deal with helping gangsters get out of gangs. They probably do exist in some of the larger cities. Victor? Victor? Generally, those types of programs do exist in the community. Generally they're geared toward the youthful offenders and the street gangs, so as federal officers we rarely have contact with those. Okay. Rachel, were you going to say something? I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Well, I was just going to mention, we also have to clarify a little bit about the success rate. I think a lot of us, somebody actually making it through the term of supervision without being revoked is considered success. Whether that's a total rehabilitative success story on the part of somebody coming out of a gang being drug free, crime free for however many years, I don't know of particular programs like that in the Atlanta area, but I have had a few people actually complete supervision without going back to prison. They just put it on hold for a little while. Greg Dale, any awareness there on organizations that may be set up to help gang members I think there might be some help available through the academic community. I think Dale already mentioned George Knox and associates there. It was the University of Illinois at Chicago, I believe is his organization. I think they may be aware of some specific resources, but again we're more on the enforcement side rather than the treatment side, so we could assist with finding such organizations but we aren't directly connected to them. Another one I would suggest would be to contact ACA, American Correctional Association. They have publications and documents and they probably could help you there also. And again, NIJ and those organizations, Department of Justice, might have some information be very helpful. Thank you very much for that and I believe we still have Cincinnati online. Is that correct? That's correct. Hi, Cincinnati, thanks for being patient. What's your question? Yes, because of confidentiality concerns, to what extent can we provide information to the local intelligence community about gang activity of our offenders? Okay, good question. Hold on and these guys are pointing to one another. Tom? I don't know if confidentiality comes in as much in this type of situation as it does in a drug abuser or somebody with mental health problems. You've identified someone as a gang member, there's a certain risk, a definite risk to the community and as we've all said before in previous discussions, if you want to cultivate these law enforcement sources and you want information from them, you better be prepared to give some information to them and it starts right there. If you've identified someone as a member of a gang or a threat group, give that information up. I really don't think that's as much a confidentiality issue. What are your thoughts on that? Go ahead, Richard. That's something else that we have already established a basis as far as disclosure of this to the police and the community is the law enforcement address notifications that we are now required by law and the vast majority of your gang members are going to fall under that violent crime act either through drugs or guns or that history in their past. So you already have the opportunity to provide this information to your local law enforcement and to any law enforcement agency, you deem needs to have that information. I think it's just been given so few juveniles confidentiality is just not really a concern with us. In the case of a juvenile it would be a concern but in the federal system we just have very very few of them so I think it's more important to share the information with the local law enforcement agency. Being mindful that we don't put this on the bulletin board in the restrooms somewhere. It's shared with other law enforcement agencies who also keep confidence the information we give them. Sure. Maybe give them a summary memo summarizing the case and what the person is all about and put on there. You know this is for law enforcement intelligence purposes only. Okay. Right. Okay. I've got one more facts question and I don't know that we have anybody else calling in at this point so here we go. Are ongoing gang wars the same in different parts of the country? In Nebraska we don't have ongoing gang wars they more of a start and finish but for different reasons. I don't think there's one war that goes on for two or three years but something may happen in one instance that causes a gang war to start that may die out then something else happens and then that dies out after a while. But I don't know if there's ongoing gang war. I know different gangs have feuds going on but as an ongoing gang war I don't believe that's happening in Nebraska. But do the same like if gang one is feuding with gang two in Omaha are those two gangs automatically feuding in New York? It may not be so. It may be a regional feud that doesn't bring in everybody that's on this side or that side. Craig I see you nodding your head thought on that? I agree totally in our long-term experience within the Federal Bureau of Prisons we've seen situations and I'll go back to Texas again where we saw the Mexican economy and the Texas syndicate for all practices at war within the Texas Department of Corrections but then we'd find within the Federal Bureau of Prisons the same two groups would basically say that's there we're doing fine here and they would get along fine for years. So we see more of a situation where there might be a problem started in one state or one jurisdiction one part of the country. It might eventually move to affect other parts of the country but so far when we've seen a local situation say between Latin Kings and Los Salidos in Massachusetts we don't necessarily see a problem between Latin Kings and Los Salidos in the federal system or say down in Florida. It's pretty local and pretty regional but I'd also indicate that you need to be very aware of that feuding and that those issues going in other parts of the country because they could affect you in the future but I think the macro answer is not necessarily a problem in one city or one part of a city may not necessarily be occurring at the same time in throughout the gang in other cities other states. I think we've exhausted our questions I think we've exhausted our time and I think we've exhausted our panelists. So at that point let me say this let me again thank our guests and most importantly let me thank you our audience for watching and participating in this program we really hope that you found today's presentations informative and that the information will be useful in your management supervision of defendants and offenders who are gang members. Please be on the lookout also for future announcements of upcoming programs in the federal judicial centers special needs offenders series and with that I thank you and enjoy the rest of your day.