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Jails Track Gang Members From Within
Updated: Saturday, Nov. 12, 2005 - 2:01 PM

By STEPHEN MANNING
Associated Press Writer


UPPER MARLBORO, Md. (AP) - It's only 10:30 a.m., but the intake room at the county jail is already full. About 30 people, mostly men, slump bleary-eyed in chairs or talk into a bank of pay phones, many of them swept up by police in the pre-dawn hours during a drug sting.

A Prince George's County corrections officer shouts out names, and the soon-to-be inmates shuffle up to another officer at a computer. One man in a white tank top holds his jeans up with one hand as he approaches. He's already seen a court commissioner and had his mug shot taken.

The uniformed woman behind the desk asks a series of questions as she builds an electronic file for the inmate - age, address, Social Security number, whether he has been arrested before. She also asks if he's part of a gang.

For about a year, the county jail has tried to track gang members through a computerized database, flagging records of inmates who acknowledge to belonging to the approximately 20 gangs that operate in the Washington area.

It's a way to ensure safety inside the jail, but also a symptom of a problem with gangs outside the facility's razor-wire fence. As gangs such as MS-13 grow and authorities step up enforcement, the issue eventually makes its way into the penal system.

"When you look at the gang problem, you've got to understand the people who are arrested end up in prison," said Barry Stanton, the jail's director. "We've got to take a proactive approach."

Law enforcement officials have long struggled to combat gang violence in the region. But groups such as MS-13 have recently conducted more brazen attacks, including several killings in Prince George's and a series of stabbings in Montgomery County.

In August, federal authorities announced a broad indictment of 19 alleged MS-13 gang members on racketeering charges. The indictment depicted the Hispanic gang as more than just a group of street toughs _ prosecutors alleged MS-13 cliques actively recruited new members, kept tight discipline and plotted attacks.

MS-13 members also allegedly collected dues, money the indictment said was used to help members in prison in the region or in El Salvador. That's the native country of many members and gangs often thrive behind bars there.

"MS-13 members do not stop being MS-13 members when they are locked up," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Sandra Wilkinson at a court hearing shortly after the federal indictments.

Which means they become an issue for Maryland's prisons, county jails and the juvenile detention centers.

The numbers of gang members in the state's prisons, which generally handle prisoners after they are sentenced, and the jails, where inmates go while awaiting trial, are still relatively small. The Prince George's County Correctional Center, for example, usually has only about 20 self-identified gang members at a facility that has a capacity for roughly 1,320 prisoners.

Yet the potential for violence, along with the increasing organization of the gangs, has led many area facilities to step up tracking of members.

The Montgomery County Detention Center began identifying gang members a few years ago, according to director Arthur Wallenstein, who refused to provide details, citing privacy laws. The state corrections system has increased the number of intelligence officers who work on gang issues, but spokeswoman Priscilla Doggett also declined to give specifics on gang efforts.

The state's juvenile justice system, which operates several detention centers, also identifies gang members at intake and takes photos of tattoos that signify gang membership. Many gangs recruit at a young age, as young as middle school, and many members cycle through the juvenile centers. As of two weeks ago, there were 188 juveniles with gang ties out of about 2,500 kids, according to department spokesman Eddie Hopkins.

"Many of the kids that are recruited are kids we will see come into our system early on," he said.

At the Prince George's jail, prisoners are held for an average of two months while they await trial. The facility is built for different levels of security and also houses some federal inmates as they await trial.

Most inmates who are gang members identify themselves when they arrive, Stanton said. Officers enter the information into the prisoner's computerized file. The program automatically sends an e-mail to all corrections officers notifying them that the inmate is part of the gang.

That information is used in several ways. It alerts officers about potentially dangerous inmates, Stanton said. It can also help the jail decide how to house the inmate, factors that include keeping members of rival gangs apart in the cell blocks. The intelligence can be transferred to the state system if the prisoner is later convicted in court.

The database will be updated soon so that it can include photos of alleged gang tattoos on inmates and gang graffiti found in cells, according to Joe Dabay, the jail's information services manager.

"It is imperative we know as much as we can about them," he said.