Gangs Thrive In Maximum Security

Lesley Stahl Reports On Criminal Gang Activity Behind Bars

(CBS)  Pelican Bay authorities have had some success getting inmates to flip by offering them a deal: In exchange for telling how crimes are being hatched and orchestrated from within the prison, they’re given privileges and moved into a segregated wing off the SHU.

But four men who took the deal say that it's really easy to get messages in and out. Epi Cortina brutally beat and murdered a fellow gang member. He lived on the SHU for nine years before he renounced his membership in the Mexican American gang, Nuestra Familia.

"What kinds of crimes were perpetrated, ordered from within the SHU from Nuestra Familia?" asks Stahl.

"Anywhere from murder to money laundering, bank robberies, armored-car robberies, home invasions, drug deals, prostitution," says Cortina.

Miguel Perez gunned down a witness in a murder trial. He has told prison officials how his old gang, the Mexican Mafia, dispatches orders in the visiting rooms.

"One of the things we learned was sign language. So this way if we seen someone, you sign to him," says Miguel Perez. "If I used regular sign language, it’s easy for you to go and understand it or pick it up. … But we throw our own stuff in."

These men all say they want kids on the street to know that gang life is a sham.

"Loyalty, honor, it’s not there," says Miguel Perez. "There ain’t no such thing. I mean, it’s something that’s fed to you, but it’s not true."

"Can you leave a gang?" asks Stahl.

"No, you can't walk away from it, just like that," says Miguel Perez. "To answer your question simply, yes, they want us dead. Each and every one of us. … Especially more so now that they get to see this interview. We're the ones speaking out. You're automatically marked for dead."

The gangs at Pelican Bay are organized like the military, with strict discipline that includes going to school, but not in the traditional sense. They go to gang school, learning, for instance, how to make weapons from materials the state is required to give them.

In a prison video, an inmate demonstrates how he constructed a crossbow out of elastic from his underwear, writing paper rolled tightly, and a plastic spoon sharpened into a lethal point. It’s made specifically to be fired through the mesh door.

Pelican Bay’s Jim Dajenais showed 60 Minutes a display of prison-made weapons.

"Since August of 2002, we’ve confiscated about 1,258 weapons," says Dajenais. "Inside of a SHU cell, they have the metal frame door, the embedded metal. This here was cut right out of the door, and this is a real recent discovery. The particular inmate that did this, he makes one of these about once a month."

"I hear that some of these guys can actually make handcuff keys," says Stahl.

"In the security housing unit, all of the gang members know how to make handcuff keys," says Dajenais. "This particular handcuff key here, this was manufactured from an inhaler. Just the metal part of an inhaler, and they shaped it into a handcuff key."

The gangs place a huge emphasis on formal education.

"We discipline ourselves to study at least three or four hours a day," says Bob Overton, who left the Aryan Brotherhood.

He says they make themselves smarter in the service of crime. What kind of books do they read? "Tactical books," says Overton. "'The Art Of War.' 'The Book Of Five Rings.' 'Marcus Aurelius.'"

"Psychology books," says Miguel Perez.

"Business, Wall Street," adds Cortina.

Steven Gruel, a former federal prosecutor who investigated Cortina’s gang, says Nuestra Familia ran its operations like a Fortune 500 company. An FBI surveillance tape shows a group of gang members meeting in a California hotel room to discuss their latest orders from Pelican Bay. According to Gruel, the gang members are having what he calls a business meeting.

"Here you have the regiment leaders coming from San Francisco, from San Jose, from Salinas, from Visalia, from Oakland -- sitting around for a meeting," says Gruel. "One of the members brought this document, and so what you have is an agenda."

"You have to see some of these words. The main topics were management, infrastructure, goals, and objectives," says Stahl.

"Right," says Gruel. "The fact that that came out of prison and out of the teachings and the work of the Nuestra Familia is, quite frankly, no surprise."

Gruel, however, came to respect their business savvy, which included opening accounts at legitimate banks: "You know, the proceeds in those accounts are probably from drug dealing or murder for hire or robberies."

"Is this a huge enterprise?" asks Stahl.

"The Nuestra Familia probably has in excess of 1,000 or so members and associates," says Gruel. "So, it’s, you know, not a small band of individuals. It’s large in nature."