How to Control Every Gang in Southern California with only 150-300 People
Make sure everyone in your gang is behind bars.
Alex Tabarrok explains:
The Mexican Mafia is a fairly small prison gang (perhaps 150-300 made members) and it has significant operational control only within prisons in Southern California yet the Mexican Mafia is extremely powerful. In fact, the MM taxes hundreds of often larger Southern California street gangs at rates of 10-30% of revenues. How can a prison gang tax tax street gangs? …
The key to the MM’s power is that most drug dealers will sooner or later, usually sooner, end up in prison. Thus, the MM can credibly threaten drug dealers outside of prison with punishment once they are inside prison. Moreover, prison is the only place where members of many different gangs congregate. Thus, by maintaining control of the prison bottleneck, the MM can tax hundreds of gangs.
They even use their clout to regulate drive-by-shootings. This is all detailed in a new paper by David Skarbek, “Governance and Prison Gangs.” (Via Marginal Revolution)
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