LAKE BUTLER, FLA. -- When Florida prison official Cory A. Godwin enters a humid cellblock on a sweltering afternoon, some of the black inmates take one look at the 28-year-old, suit-wearing white man squatting before them, spouting phrases like "Talk to me; tell me who you're down with" and roll their eyes.
Two cellmates, a baby-faced 17-year-old serving seven years for armed robbery and a 20-year-old burglar, exchange glances and laugh out loud. But when Godwin opens their footlockers, fishes past baby powder, oatmeal snack cakes and chocolate chip cookies and pulls out personal pictures, the inmates grow uneasy. Each possesses a snapshot of friends on the outside. In one, several young men are fanning money like playing cards and one is wearing a six-point star medallion, a symbol of the Folk gang alliance. In another, young men are flashing gang hand signs.
When Godwin begins questioning the pair about possible gang connections, they suddenly drop their sarcasm and turn serious, rattling off denials. Now their exchanged glances speak of puzzlement, as if to say, "Who schooled him?"
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So it goes in cell after cell -- Godwin's familiarity with hand signs, graffiti and gang alliances prompts inmates to talk about encounters with gangs in their Florida neighborhoods and in the prison system. Most profess to have no personal relationship or interest in joining a gang, including an 18-year-old whose footlocker yields three handwritten pages containing the history, rules and prayers for members of the Folk alliance.
A former cellmate, he insists, left the material.
"If you are studying this, you need to know what you're getting into," Godwin tells him. "It's clear they have already tried to recruit you."
As Godwin reads the gang material, he shakes his head. The writer has made serious errors that true gang members would consider disrespectful. Under some circ*mstances, Godwin says, such mistakes could cause a prisoner to be beaten or even killed.
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When Godwin began his career nine years ago as a 19-year-old Florida correctional officer, the prison system measured its success in dealing with disruptive inmates by how quickly and effectively it quelled fights and disturbances. These days, Godwin carries the title of Threat Group Intelligence Coordinator. He analyzes tattoos, breaks codes and monitors every identified gang member in the Florida prison system, maintaining files in a vault-like room at the department's Tallahassee headquarters.
Godwin's mission, in essence, is to help the system predict and avoid gang conflicts.
"The trick in this business is to stop it before it happens," Godwin says.
He stops to visit a prison dormitory housing offenders ages 14 to 25, primarily new inmates waiting to be shipped to prisons across the state. As a group, they reflect the complexities of the new generation of inmates: Many are so young that they wear wristbands entitling them to extra orange juice, milk and vegetables during prison meals.
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Many are conditioned to violence: A 17-year-old convicted of a shooting has "Thug Life" tattooed on his arm. A 21-year-old smiles as he explains his three attempted-murder convictions. "I was high," he says. "I ain't no bad person."
Godwin moves on to join prison social worker Belinda Perry in questioning another new arrival, a blond, blue-eyed, self-acknowledged Crip member. In a prison office, the chubby-faced 18-year-old gang member sits with his back to the wall and makes his position clear: "I can't voluntarily tell you anything," he says. "You have to ask."
And so they do.
He joined the gang at age 15 by surviving the initiation, a gang beating. The gang, he says, was all "about making it through life and about being somebody." His gang's activities included burglaries and drug and gun sales. He had reached a rank that placed him on the third level of the gang's chain of command and counted as allies a long list of Folk-affiliated gangs.
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At Godwin's request, he demonstrates his knowledge of gang hand signs, flashing his fingers with the rapid ease of a fluent sign-language speaker.
Intrigued, Godwin rolls his chair so close that the two men's knees nearly touch. Godwin presses for more details. But the prisoner does not know the history of the Folk alliance, and his eyes frequently scan the ceiling as he struggles to remember and write down his gang's coded alphabet. He gets stumped after three letters. "I've got them all over at the dorm," he tells Godwin. The 18-year-old acknowledges that when he joined the gang, no one told him that he could not leave without being subjected to another beating by fellow gang members. "I would get out of the gang right now if I thought there would be no repercussions," he says.
The prisoner says he expects his gang's leader to arrive in the Florida prison system in a few days. He admits that if the leader orders him to commit a violent act in prison, he will have but one response: "If he orders it, I got to do it. There is no way out." CAPTION: Florida prison official Cory A. Godwin, an expert on gangs, surveys contraband containing gang symbols. Godwin tries to predict and prevent gang conflicts.
