How SCDC manages Security Threat Groups: history, designation, and prison gang activity in the public record

SCDC designated the Five Percenters a Security Threat Group in 1995, and its 2025 Accountability Report counts about 1,021 inmates designated and entered in NCIC and Gangnet. The April 15, 2018 Lee Correctional Institution riot left seven inmates dead, and gang rivalry was reported as its context. Federal cases describe inmates running gang and drug operations by contraband phone, and the agency has campaigned for authority to jam those phones. [1][2][3][4][5][6]

Origins

SCDC designated the Five Percenters a Security Threat Group (STG) in June 1995 and placed designated inmates in long-term administrative segregation. On April 21, 1999, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed, calling the designation a rational response to a threat to prison safety. The Five Percenters profile carries the full litigation record. [1]

Footprint in South Carolina

On December 6, 2019, The Post and Courier reported that corrections officials estimated one of every 10 prisoners was a validated gang member. The same report named the Bloods, Crips and Gangster Disciples as the groups holding power over the inmate population. SCDC's 2025 Annual Accountability Report states that approximately 1,021 inmates had been designated and entered in the NCIC and Gangnet databases, with an average of 40 new designations per month in the current year. [2][7]

Structure and organization

The 2025 Accountability Report lists NCIC, Gangnet, GTL Command, Viapath Command, social media and an intelligence app as platforms used to monitor suspected STG members and to collect evidence for formal designation. The 2023 Accountability Report states that the Division of Security Gang Intelligence Unit expanded its number of analysts and that the agency offers programs such as the Academy of Hope to help inmates with gang affiliations step away from the gang. [2][8]

Notable South Carolina cases

On December 10, 2020, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of South Carolina announced a 40-defendant racketeering indictment against the Insane Gangster Disciples, describing it as the largest federal racketeering conspiracy in state history. The office stated that SCDC inmates, often using contraband cell phones, orchestrated murder, kidnapping, firearms distribution and an international drug operation. The final defendant was sentenced on August 18, 2023; the office named four SCDC inmates as the organizers inside SCDC. [5][9]

On November 29, 2018, federal prosecutors announced charges against 15 defendants, five of them SCDC inmates, in a scheme that ran from at least 2015 through 2017. The inmates used smuggled smartphones to pose as women on dating websites and defraud members of the U.S. military. [10]

Federal prosecutors have charged a series of SCDC inmates with running drug operations by contraband phone. Glenn Quanta Pernell and Joseph Umphlett, Sr. were sentenced on February 12, 2020. An inmate named Shannon received life on June 12, 2023, for methamphetamine distribution in Lancaster and Kershaw counties. Benjamin Johnathan Newman, from whom SCDC seized 16 phones, was sentenced to more than 26 years on August 13, 2024. [11][12][13]

On April 12, 2024, a federal grand jury indicted former SCDC captain Christine Mary Livingston and inmate Jerell Reaves. The indictment alleges that Livingston accepted more than $200,000 in bribes and brought about 173 contraband cell phones into Broad River Correctional Institution. [14]

Inside SCDC

On April 15, 2018, violence at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville left seven inmates dead and at least 17 seriously injured over more than seven hours. An inmate witness told the Associated Press that most inmates involved were gang-affiliated. Director Bryan Stirling confirmed the recent transfer of about 300 inmates from McCormick to Lee and denied it was an effort to group gang members together. [3][15]

Post and Courier reporting traces the riot to the stabbing of Michael Milledge by Damonte Rivera, a recent transfer from McCormick. The paper reports that Milledge's allies in the Bloods then attacked Rivera, a Gangster Disciples member. [16][4]

In December 2020, state prosecutors indicted 29 men for the riot. The first four guilty pleas came on July 20, 2023, and authorities said those inmates used contraband cellphones to learn of the uprising. On September 24, 2026, a Lee County jury convicted Larry White, and he was sentenced to life without parole. [16][17][18]

Contraband reaches prisons by drone. On February 3, 2022, The Post and Courier reported that an eight-month Lee County Sheriff's Office investigation produced 20 arrests for drone drops into Lee Correctional Institution. The 2019 Post and Courier gang report described State Grand Jury indictments of 54 people in the Prison Empire smuggling case. [19][7]

Current status

SCDC leadership has pressed for authority to jam contraband phones. On December 10, 2020, Stirling called on Congress to hold a hearing on the Cellphone Jamming Reform Act, and on August 13, 2024, he said Newman's case highlighted the need for state prisons to jam phones. [5][13]

On September 30, 2025, the FCC voted unanimously to advance jamming of contraband phones, a rule that makes jamming voluntary for state and local prisons. Reports credited the effort to Stirling, by then U.S. Attorney for South Carolina, and SCDC Director Joel Anderson. [20][6]

On January 20, 2026, WIS reported official counts of 250 drone drops in 2024 and 254 in 2025. Director Anderson said the true number could exceed 300 to 350. [21]