A new report paints a picture of the balance of power that gangs have over non-gang members in prisons and one staffer says they “run the jails”, but Corrections says it has control.
A young prisoner arrives with a “nice, clean” face. Within weeks of entering a high-security unit, a gang symbol is tattooed on his cheek – likely fashioned using ink made of toothpaste and the soot of burning plastic utensils.
This scene, described in a new report on gang influence inside the prison system, illustrates how the groups have transformed prison environments into a hierarchical structure — with their members often ruling using fear and violence.
The Corrections-commissioned study, chiefly authored by criminologist Jarrod Gilbert, reveals that the number of gang-affiliated prisoners has more than doubled from 1262 to 3346 between 2010 and 2023, growing at a faster pace than the overall prison muster.
e researcher Jarrod Gilbert says gangs exert power through violence and fear. (Source: Breakfast)
The research, which first began in 2020, included in-depth interviews with staff and prisoners at facilities in Christchurch, Rimutaka, and Whanganui.
Gilbert found gangs inside prisons held “significant informal control”, which equated to the “prison environment ostensibly becoming a gang environment”, varying greatly between units but most sharply felt in the culture at higher-security facilities.
“Oh, well, they do run it [the prison]. That’s… I don’t know how you say it. They run the jails,” one Corrections staffer said.
Another said that “gangs are probably a number one issue within prisons”.
A Corrections deputy commissioner has described the report as a “fair representation of the gang situation”, saying it chiefly described the power dynamics between prisoners.
“Let me be really clear. Gangs do not run our prisons. We run our prisons,” he said. “What they’re referring to is the balance of power that gangs have over non-gang members.”
In the report, gangs were found to be a disproportionate driver of violence, with members finding it “difficult” to leave while in jail, as groups entrenched themselves within prisons – using facilities as a “key juncture” for the recruitment of members who wouldn’t have otherwise joined.
The four tiers of prison society
The emergence of gangs at the top of an informal hierarchy within prisons had also “fundamentally changed” the long-standing culture of solidarity between prisoners, the report found.
One prisoner said gangs had effectively replaced a traditional “code of ethics” between prisoners with a system based on strength and fear. “It’s all about… the biggest group of monkeys in the cage that dictate what is okay and what is not.”
Prisoners considered tier one included gang members, “civilians in good standing” were considered tier two, a vulnerable “civilian underclass” were tier three, while the lowest tier was reserved for “pariahs”, who were found to have broken the unwritten rules in jail.
Gang members tended to refer to non-members as “civilians” or “neutrals” if they are “stand-up” prisoners or by more derogatory terms such as “peasants” or “bundies” if they were not, according to the report.
There were three primary rules in prisoner culture: no narking, no covert stealing – known as tea-leafing – and a “total repudiation” of child sex offenders.
“These categories are ideal types, and therefore, the demarcation between them is sometimes blurred – for example, some gang prisoners may not have the same mana or respect that many civilian good standing prisoners have,” according to researchers.
They found that the no-narking rule often meant that fights and other kinds of violence were never reported. One prisoner said: “I’ve had about fifty fights since I’ve come to jail, and only about eight of them got discovered.”
Meanwhile, even injured prisoners won’t report assaults due to the rule: “Staff, they always ask you, ‘You all right? Everything all right?’ And you always say yeah anyway.”
Gang affiliates were involved in assaults at a rate that was significantly higher than that of non-affiliated prisoners, according to the report.
However, violence was not evenly spread across all gangs and gang types, with patched street gangs and LA-style gangs being involved in the lion’s share of assaults, while outlaw motorcycle clubs are involved in fewer.
‘Chickens’ a vital asset in the prison economy
Prison “chickens” – portions served once or twice weekly at dinner – emerged as a key currency in the informal prison economy, the report found.
“It’s like the main meat that we get in prison. We get mince here and there but it’s not as good as chicken. Chicken’s solid meat,” one prisoner told researchers.
Chicken portions were typically traded for around $5 each, while nicotine lozenges – known as “lozzies” – fetched between $5-15 for a tray of twelve.
“This was usually for members’ own personal consumption, but could also be done with the intention of on-selling commodities as a way of making money.
“Nicotine lozenges in particular were reported to be taken from vulnerable prisoners so that they could be resold to those dependent upon them, sometimes even being sold back to the person who they were taken from,” the report found.
Gang members often extracted these commodities from vulnerable prisoners through extortion, particularly targeting new arrivals.
One prisoner said: “I’ll stand at his door, ‘Who you with?’ ‘F***k. Oh, no one.’ Me: ‘Oh, yep. Oh, your chickens and all your meat come to me. If you don’t like it, f**k off.’
“You know, that’s how it is.”
Some units reportedly required regular “rent” payments of chicken to dominant gangs.
“On the special chicken night, you get a nice chicken, then everyone has to give it to this guy no matter who you are, him and his mates, for the gang mates,” one prisoner said.
Meanwhile, the availability of contraband ebbs and flows in what researchers described as a “boom and bust cycle” – sometimes widely available, but then suddenly scarce.
Despite its popularity on the outside, methamphetamine wasn’t especially common behind bars. One prisoner explained why: “Me and my cellmate were just awake all night in our cell, it was f***ing boring as watching infomercials on the TV.”
The drug’s high cost created another barrier.
Cannabis joints – “described as being tiny in size” – were more popular and typically sold for around $10 each. Tobacco cigarettes, often “meagre and hand-rolled”, fetched similar prices of $5-10 each, despite their lower street value.
Voluntary protective custody rises dramatically
As a result of rising fears of violence, the number of prisoners seeking protective custody has risen dramatically – from 24.5% in 2018 to more than 35% by 2023.
Segregation is generally done in special units comprised entirely of prisoners in voluntary isolation. Prisoners can ask staff to enter at any time, although they generally must have a credible reason for doing so and are subject to assessment by staff.
Gilbert said the increase spoke to problems that existed with rising gang influence: “On current trends, virtually two parallel prison systems will be formed, a gang and a non-gang one. If this comes to pass, it will not be by design but by ongoing circumstance.”
Gang recruitment key in jails – report
A “clear finding” was that prisons were recruiting grounds for gangs, with staff and inmates saying many joining “may not have done so if they were not in prison”.
Fear and uncertainty upon entering prison created prime conditions for recruitment, with gangs positioning themselves as sources of protection and stability.
No participants described being directly pressured to join, but were instead pressured and influenced by gangs’ position at the top of the prison hierarchy and their “perceived solution – to a variety of problems, many of which are created by the gangs themselves”.
“Straight up, I had no one. I had no one to talk to,” one prisoner said. “A couple of my friends were in the blacks [Black Power] and they said well this is like your second family, if not your first family.”
Tattoos were also an important asset for gangs.
Prison tattoo artists fashioned improvised ink “guns” using small motors from CD players or electric shavers combined with items like pens and cutlery. Meanwhile, ink could come from the soot of burning plastic cutlery, thickened with shampoo or toothpaste.
The markings, often applied early in a person’s gang membership, effectively trapped them by making reintegration into mainstream society hard without expensive removals.
“What gang members describe as a mark of commitment, can also be seen as an important tool of gang control,” researchers wrote.
One Corrections staffer said: “You’ve got [a young prisoner], his first time in prison. Nice clean face. He goes to [high security units] and, yeah, then six weeks, a month, maybe less, he has a Black Power Fist on his cheek or a bulldog on his forehead.”
But while the report found that while gang membership looked attractive to many new prisoners, “the reality often plays out very differently” with membership creating “significantly more difficulties than non-membership”.
Gang membership offered practical benefits beyond protection – including access to goods, status, and brotherhood.
However, many found these advantages came with significant downsides.
“I think that people who are in gangs have more stress. Definitely we had more stress,” one former gang member said.
“I think I’d be stressing out more about where I’m going or what unit I’m going to, just in case there are those people there that are rivals that might do something.”
Some gang members could be part of solution – researcher
New gang members more inclined to violence were also younger and often looking to “make a name for themselves and their gangs”, according to staff interviewed.
“They’re less traditional. I mean, the old traditional Mob, Black Power. The older style prisoners in that never used to cause you much hassles. That is young feeder groups want to make names for themselves [and are the source of much more violence].”
Gilbert said recognising the splits in gangs, between young and old, was critical to changing prison culture, which was fundamentally “of prisoner making”.
But “political kickback” may get in the way, he said.
Researchers found that balancing gang numbers in units, quickly isolating disruptors, and greater staff training around consistent treatment of prisoners was important to address the problem, as was better encouraging exits from gangs, researchers said.
“The prison culture is of prisoner making, with gangs having the dominant say. Thus it will require buy-in from the gangs if this culture is to change. That is a tall order,” Gilbert said.
“However, given that many older gang members recognise the problems that gang commitment causes, such changes may be possible.
“Actively promoting gang-neutral units – or entire prisons – with extra freedoms and privileges, may yield results. This might be aided by using pro social leaders in the promotional efforts, including those who are not incarcerated.
“However, historical attempts to use pro social gang leaders in different capacities has proven to be politically contentious.
“Since there is little evidence that this situation has changed, proactive policy decisions will have to consider outcome efficacy alongside the risk of political kickback.”
‘Fair representation’ of the situation – Corrections
Corrections deputy commissioner Neil Beales has described the new report as “a very fair representation” of the gang situation being faced in prisons.
“In prison, some of the things that happen on the outside, which would probably be less serious, in prisons they become a lot more serious because of the kind of environment that we live,” he said.
Newer gangs have “proven, both in the community and in prisons, that they are willing to go further than what we had previously been used to seeing gangs go to in terms of the violence they will perpetuate, the lengths they will go to to bring contraband in”, he said.
He highlighted that the report also found that the prisoners and staff interviewed described corruption among Corrections staff as a rare occurrence.
