David Grann
Staff Writer
The New Yorker

Citation
"The Brand" by David Grann documents the rise and potential demise of the Aryan Brotherhood, a murderous gang that has spread its tentacles throughout the federal prison system and beyond. In his fearlessly reported and brilliantly written feature, Grann vividly depicts the brutal subculture of America's maximum security penitentiaries. He also tells the inspiring story of how a gutsy prosecutor named Gregory Jessner took on the gang, at great personal risk. Grann shows how by indicting the Aryan Brotherhood, Jessner is striking a blow for the rights of some of the least sympathetic victims in our society -- convicted, violent criminals who have become prey inside our prison walls.

Excerpt
"The Brand"
February 16 & 23, 2004
There are hundreds of gangs in this country: the Crips, the Bloods, the Latin Dragons, the Dark Side Nation, the Lynch Mob. But the Aryan Brotherhood is one of the few gangs that were born in prison. In 1964, as the nation's racial unrest spread into the penitentiaries, a clique of white inmates at San Quentin prison, in Marin County, California, began gathering in the yard. The men were mostly motorcycle bikers with long hair and handlebar mustaches; a few were neo-Nazis with tattoos of swastikas. Together, they decided to strike against the blacks, who were forming their own militant group, called the Black Guerrilla Family, under the influence of the celebrated prison leader George Jackson. Initially, the whites called themselves the Diamond Tooth Gang, and as they roamed the yard they were unmistakable: pieces of glass embedded in their teeth glinted in the sunlight.
Before long, they had merged with other whites at San Quentin to form a single band: the Aryan Brotherhood. While there had always been cliques in prison, known as "tips," these men were now aligned by race and resorted to a kind of violence that had never been seen at San Quentin, a place that prisoners likened to "gladiator school." All sides, including the Latino gangs La Nuestra Familia and the Mexican Mafia, attacked each other with homemade knives that were honed from light fixtures and radio parts, and hidden in mattresses, air vents, and drainpipes. "Everything was seen through the delusional lens of race-everything," Edward Bunker, an inmate at the time, told me. (He went on to become a novelist, and appeared as Mr. Blue in "Reservoir Dogs.")
Most prison gangs tried to recruit "fish," the new and most vulnerable inmates. But according to interviews with former gang members-as well as thousands of pages of once classified F.B.I. reports, internal prison records, and court documents-the Aryan Brotherhood chose a radically different approach, soliciting only the most capable and violent. They were given a pledge:

An Aryan brother is without a care,
He walks where the weak and
   heartless won't dare,
And if by chance he should stumble
   and lose control,
His brothers will be there, to help
   reach his goal,
For a worthy brother, no need is
   too great,
He need not but ask, fulfillment's
   his fate.
For an Aryan brother, death holds
   no fear,
Vengeance will be his, through his
   brothers still here.