PRETORIA - The Madlanga Commission has heard that gang links do not stop at the prison gates.
While testifying before the inquiry, Correctional Services Commissioner Makgothi Thobakgale said many offenders enter correctional facilities already linked to gangs operating in their communities.
But incarceration, he told the Commission, does not necessarily sever those ties.
Instead, some offenders establish links with prison gangs while maintaining their connections to gangs on the outside.
Thobakgale said this creates a network that can connect criminal activity inside and outside correctional centres.
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He identified several street gangs, including the Americans, Hard Livings, Young Dixie Boys, Clever Kids and Naughty Boys, saying they retain influence in communities through activities including drug trafficking, extortion and violence.
According to Thobakgale, some offenders who enter prison with these affiliations later form relationships with traditional number gangs inside correctional centres.
At the same time, they may retain their external allegiances.
This, he said, can create a continuing channel of communication and command between offenders inside correctional centres and gang leadership operating outside.
Thobakgale described correctional centres as potentially becoming strategic nodes in wider organised-crime networks, rather than isolated institutions.
"Correctional centers thereby become strategic nodes within broader organised crime networks rather than isolated institutions," Thobakgale added.
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