Dynamics of prison gang affiliation and violence: The Heartless Felons and the Down the Way Boys---A social learning study

Prison violence in general and specifically violence associated with prison gangs has been a top concern for prison administrators and one that has been at the forefront of correctional research. This study examines a Midwestern state's department of corrections that has witnessed instances of violence within their prisons rise sharply in recent years---including a 74% increase in inmate disturbances from 2009 through 2010 (Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections [DRC], 2011b). Much of this violence can be attributed to the street and prison gangs that comprise the department's many security threat groups. Of these security threat groups, the Heartless Felons, have emerged to be a formidable presence, and in doing so have contributed greatly to the spike in disturbances and other violent incidents. Using logistic regression, negative binomial regression, crosstabulation with chi-square statistic, and descriptive statistics--instances of prison violence amongst the Heartless Felon membership was analyzed along demographic variables. The relation between specific neighborhood affiliations, ties to that neighborhood, and specific prior street gang membership was examined as hypothesized correlates to increased prison violence among Heartless Felon members. The results did not indicate a significant relationship between Heartless Felon prison gang membership and prior membership in specific street gangs. Links between this prison gang and ties to the neighborhood under study in relation to incidents of prison violence were also not found to be significant. However, several significant predictors of prison violence associated with the Heartless Felon prison gang were found and are discussed in detail. Implications to correctional policy and suggestions for further research are also discussed.