BALTIMORE, MD - Maryland Division of Correction gang experts say they have documented more than 250 different gangs and 1,900 gang members within the prison walls of Jessup's multiple facilities.

The biggest and worst of them is the Black Guerrilla Family, a “historic prison gang” that was founded in 1966, said Lennard Johnson, a captain in the Maryland Division of Correction.

Within the gang are two factions: an older, more experienced division called “Ben” and a younger, more violent sect called “Cambone,” said Johnson, who is also the assistant director of the Division of Correction's Intelligence Unit.

Prison authorities can identify BGF members by tattoos of dragons or the number 276 and through Swahili, which the gang's members use to communicate, Johnson said Thursday at the first Maryland Gang Summit, held at the Sheraton Hotel in Columbia.

Prison officials said acknowledging that gangs are a problem and studying them for intelligence is the best way to fight them.

 “We are aware that gangs exist, and we are attempting to control them,” said Phil Smith, intelligence lieutenant of the Division of Correction.

Members of the Cambone faction also have begun to align themselves with the nation's second-largest prison gang, the Bloods, a historic rival of the gang, the Crips.

Last month, a 29-year-old Baltimore City man was stabbed to death in the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup.

A source familiar with the investigation said the man was a member of the BGF, and the stabbing was the result of friction between the BGF and the Crips.

The third-largest gang in Maryland prisons is Dead Man Inc., a mainly white Aryan gang, whose members act as hit men for other prisoners and are “extraordinarily violent,” Smith said.

Dead Man Inc. members can be identified by pyramid tattoos and are often looked down upon by older white prison gangs for not being Aryan enough, because they allow some black members, Johnson said.

Members of prison gangs live by a simple credo: “What's mine is mine; what's yours is mine,” Smith said. He said that gang members are responsible in prison for many of the same crimes they commit on the outside, namely extortion, assault, drug violations, rape, murder and robbery.

Gang members of all types can sometimes be identified by which magazines they read, the most obvious of which is Don Diva magazine, which calls itself “The Original Street Bible,” Smith said.

The notorious Hispanic gang MS-13 does not have a large presence in Maryland's prisons, Johnson said.

Biggest prison gangs

» Black Guerrilla Family

» Bloods

» Dead Man Inc.

» The Crips

» Murder Inc.

» Polar Bear Family

- Source: Maryland Division of Correction