Three decades of a designation: the Five Percenters and SCDC

The South Carolina Department of Corrections designated the Five Percenters, also called the Nation of Gods and Earths, a Security Threat Group on 1995-06-16 after a January 1995 assault on officers at Allendale and an April 1995 riot and hostage-taking at Broad River. Roughly 300 inmates were moved to segregation, releasable on renunciation. The Fourth Circuit upheld the designation in 1999 (174 F.3d 464), and later cases, including Incumaa v. Stirling (2015), show the designation still in effect while most validated members lived in general population. [1][2][3]

Key South Carolina cases

Inmates began filing suits in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina in the summer of 1995, naming Director Michael Moore, Deputy Director William Catoe and Director of Security Kenneth McKellar, with the ACLU of South Carolina and the Southern Center for Human Rights as counsel. The cases were consolidated under No. 2:96-cv-05555 on 1996-10-25 before Judge Patrick Michael Duffy and Magistrate Judge Robert S. Carr. On 1997-12-03 Judge Duffy granted summary judgment to the defendants on the Eighth Amendment, equal protection and custody claims but denied it on the total ban of Five Percenter literature and entered a preliminary injunction allowing access to properly censored literature; a consent order made that injunction permanent on 1998-08-21. [1][4][5]

On 1999-04-21 the Fourth Circuit affirmed in In re Long Term Administrative Segregation of Inmates Designated as Five Percenters, 174 F.3d 464. Chief Judge Wilkinson, joined by Judge King and Judge Lee, assumed without deciding that the Five Percenters were a religious group and held under Turner v. Safley that the STG designation was rationally related to prison security, that the equal protection claim failed for want of evidence of differential treatment, and that indefinite segregation did not violate the Eighth Amendment. The court also upheld SCDC's practice of releasing inmates who renounce affiliation and the refusal to certify a class. The Supreme Court denied review in 1999 and the district court closed the case on 2000-04-20 after a $5,000 fee settlement. [1][5]

Later decisions kept the designation in view. In 2001 the South Carolina Administrative Law Judge Division dismissed an appeal by an Evans Correctional Institution inmate seeking a non-pork tray, reciting SCDC's position that it did not recognize the five-percenters as a religious group but as a security threat group and that it had housed all members of the group in the Special Management Unit. In Incumaa v. Ozmint (2007) the Fourth Circuit dismissed as moot a Broad River riot participant's challenge to the Maximum Security Unit publication ban after SCDC released him from the MSU in 2005. In Incumaa v. Stirling (2015) the same court held that the inmate, held in security detention for two decades after the 1995 riot, had a liberty interest in avoiding that confinement and a triable due process claim, noting that renunciation is only one of three avenues for release and does not guarantee it. The District of South Carolina applied that holding in Halcomb v. Ravenal (2018). [6][7][2][8]

Inside SCDC

The designation followed three incidents in the first four months of 1995. In January 1995 a group of Five Percenters assaulted three inmates at Lieber Correctional Institution, and in a second incident that month a group attacked three correctional officers at Allendale Correctional Institution, beating them with their own batons and using their own pepper spray; all three officers were hospitalized. In April 1995 six Five Percenters and one other inmate staged a riot at Broad River Correctional Institution with knives, softball bats and improvised weapons, seized one officer and two food service employees as hostages, and held them through an eleven-hour standoff; four officers were hospitalized. [1]

On 1995-06-16 Director of Security Kenneth McKellar sent Director Michael Moore a memorandum recommending designation, attaching a New Jersey intelligence report and noting that the New Jersey Department of Corrections and the Federal Bureau of Prisons had already classified the group as a threat group; Moore approved. SCDC then moved identified members into administrative segregation and maximum custody, with full-time in-cell confinement except for showers and recreation. A 1996 South Carolina report said about 60 inmates had been in solitary confinement for a year, allowed five hours of exercise a week in handcuffs and leg chains, and that released inmates had to convince officials they were never Five Percenters or renounce by signing a form. A 1999 commentary put the number in solitary at approximately seventy. [1][4][9]

Under the policy an inmate could leave STG status only if the Director removed the group's designation, if SCDC found it had misidentified him, or if he renounced affiliation. By 2015 SCDC's regulations still treated the Five Percenters like a violent gang, but the Fourth Circuit recorded that other validated Five Percenters were permitted to live in the general population and openly maintain their affiliation, and that the plaintiff was one of only two held in the SMU. [1][2]

Where it stands

No public source opened for this profile reports a change to the South Carolina designation after 1995. The most recent public descriptions are the Fourth Circuit's 2015 opinion, which states that SCDC regulations treat the Five Percenters like a violent gang while validated members may live in general population, and the 2018 Halcomb decision, which continued to apply Incumaa. A 2009 Associated Press report stated that the group was considered a security threat in South Carolina prisons and its literature banned. Whether the designation remains in force in 2026 is not established by any public source located. [2][8][10]

Other states have moved in different directions. New Jersey adopted an STG policy in 1998, designated the Five Percent Nation, and transferred core members to a management unit from 1998-03-04; the Third Circuit upheld that policy in Fraise v. Terhune in 2002 over a dissent. A Michigan federal magistrate in 2009 found no evidence that NOGE advocates violence and recommended lifting a literature ban. In Virginia, a 2014 bench trial found NOGE had acted as a prison gang and upheld VDOC's restrictions under RLUIPA, but in 2017 Judge Leonie Brinkema found VDOC had not produced sufficient evidence to support the gang designation and ordered the group treated like other beliefs; the Associated Press reported that fifteen state prison systems recognized the group as a religion by then. [11][10][12][13]

The full profile, with every source, the county records and a dated timeline, is on the group page.