Welcome to The Cellblock Syndicate

The Cellblock Syndicate is a subscriber-only record of Security Threat Groups in South Carolina: street gangs, prison gangs, outlaw motorcycle clubs, extremist groups and the local crews between them. It covers their history and their current activity, county by county.

How to use the site

• The wire lists current public reporting. The sweep collects it every morning at 6:00 AM Eastern, and each item links to its source.
• Groups holds a profile for each group or family: origins, South Carolina footprint, structure, identifiers as the sources describe them, notable South Carolina cases and current status.
• The map shades every county by the number of sourced records and opens each county's records with their sources.
• The timeline puts the record in date order, from 1964 to this week.
• Posts carry analysis, history and the automatic Daily Intel Digest.
• The newsletter is optional. Turn it on from your account page and choose the time it arrives.

The sourcing standard

Every entry cites its sources. Profiles and posts number their citations, and the numbered list at the end of each page gives the publisher, the date, a grade and a short supporting passage for every source. Nothing is published without a source.

Grade A sources are court records and prosecutor releases. Grade B sources are law-enforcement releases and federal assessments. Grade C sources are established news outlets. Grade D sources are club sites, social media and aggregators, which are leads and never stand alone.

What the site does not hold

The site uses public sources only. It holds no criminal justice information from any agency system and no non-public agency records. A county record means a public source places a group there. It does not by itself mean the group controls territory there, and an empty county is a collection gap, not proof of absence.