Gang intelligence unit

Intelligence forms the foundation of GIUs' efforts to suppress gang violence and crime and maintain safety within the community.

[1] The unit also promotes intelligence sharing among agencies with limited information, and allows them to prioritize their law enforcement activities as well as address trends of gang behavior.

In correctional facilities, GIUs provide staff safety and prevent violence against other inmates, the public, and rival gangs.

This allows for administrators to make informed strategic decisions, allocate resources, and request funds to ensure the safety and security of the facilities.

In the past, GIUs have been instrumental in thwarting violent plots to injure or kill other inmates or corrections faculty as well as gangs’ planned criminal activity within the community.

[2] GIUs seek to promote staff safety, violence prevention, crime solving, and the development of information sources.

[7] A comprehensive data collection plan is also essential to GIUs, as is a definition that law enforcement can use to effectively identify gang activity.

[7] This sharing of intelligence remains a vital component to the operations of a GIU within correctional facilities, where the collaboration is sometimes referred to as police/corrections partnerships, as well as among law enforcement agencies.

Intelligence sharing also helps to adequately train staff to respond to the gangs’ modus operandi, which can change as a result of new law enforcement policies or operations.

Officers, therefore, must possess strong communication and analytic skills as well as a working knowledge of gangs and how they operate both within and outside of a correctional facility.