Figure 1

CalGang Regional Nodes and California Counties’ Gang Member and Affiliate Populations

A map of California pulled apart to show each of the ten regional CalGang nodes and each node’s administrator agency. The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office maintains the Sonoma Node, which encompasses the northern 30 counties. The San Jose Police Department maintains the San Jose Node which encompasses Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito, and Monterey Counties. The Fresno County Sheriff’s Office maintains the Fresno Node, which encompasses 14 central valley counties. The Kern County Sheriff’s Office maintains the Kern Node. The Santa Barbara Police Department maintains the Santa Barbara Node, which encompasses Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura counties. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department jointly with the Los Angeles Police Department maintain the Los Angeles node. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department maintains the San Bernardino Node. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, and Riverside Police Department jointly maintain the Riverside Node. The Orange County District Attorney’s Office maintains the Orange Node. Finally, the San Diego Police Department maintains the San Diego Node encompassing San Diego and Imperial counties.

The map also shows each of the state’s 58 counties color-coded to represent the number of gang members and affiliates in each county, with county location assigned based on the location of the local law enforcement agency that initially entered them into CalGang. Four counties—Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, and Fresno—had the highest number of gang members and affiliates, with more than 10,000. Three counties—San Diego, Riverside, and Santa Clara—had between 5,001 and 10,000. Two counties—Alameda and Kern—had 2,501 to 5,000 gang members and affiliates. Seventeen counties—Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Tulare, Santa Cruz, Merced, Stanislaus, San Joaquin, San Mateo, San Francisco, Contra Costa, Sonoma, Sacramento, Sutter, Yuba, and Butte—had 501 to 2,500 gang members and affiliates. The remaining counties had less than 500 gang members and affiliates. We excluded 1,797 individuals for whom we did not have valid county information.

The source of the figure is the California State Auditor’s analysis of CalGang data obtained from the California Department of Justice as of November 23, 2015, and documents obtained from the California Gang Node Advisory Committee.

Figure 2

Proportion of Gang Members and Affiliates in CalGang by Race, Gender, and Age

The top donut chart shows the percentage of gang members and affiliates that fell into various racial categories. Of the individuals in CalGang as of November 23, 2015, 64.9 percent were Hispanic, 20.5 percent were Black, 8.2 percent were White, 2.3 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander, 3.5 percent were not identified, and 0.6 percent fell into other racial categories. Other includes African, American Indian, and people with two or more races.

The middle donut chart shows the percentage of gang members and affiliates by gender. Of the individuals in CalGang as of November 23, 2015, 93.1 percent were male, 6.8 percent were female, and 0.1 percent were not identified.

The bottom donut chart shows the percentage of gang members and affiliates by age range. Of the individuals in CalGang as of November 23, 2015, 1.7 percent were under 18 years old, 57.3 percent were 18 to 30 years old, 33.6 percent were 31 to 45 years old, and 7.4 percent were over 45 years old.

The source of the figure is the California State Auditor’s analysis of CalGang data obtained from the California Department of Justice as of November 23, 2015.

Figure 3

The CalGang Record Lifecycle Required for Establishing Reasonable Suspicion for Gangs and Suspected Gang Members

Figure 3 is a flowchart showing the required process for adding gangs and gang members to CalGang. Depicted as traffic roundabouts, the left-hand loop shows the requirements for adding a gang to CalGang which are determining that a group has three or more members, a common sign, symbol, or name, and concluding that the group’s members individually or collectively engage in a pattern of criminal gang activity. Once a law enforcement agency determines a group meets all of these criteria it creates a gang record in CalGang. On the contrary, if a group does not meet these criteria, the law enforcement agency does not enter it into CalGang.

The right-hand loop shows the required process for adding a gang member which starts with a law enforcement agency determining that an individual meets the gang member criteria for entry into CalGang. Then a supervisor must approve the documentation on the individual. The California Department of Justice’s Model Standards and Procedures for Maintaining Criminal Intelligence Files and Criminal Intelligence Operational Activities—which we refer to as state guidelines—also recommend that a quality control reviewer approve the documentation before the individual is added to CalGang. If the documentation not approved by the supervisor or the quality control reviewer—if the agency has a quality control review process in place—the record is not entered into CalGang.

Below the traffic roundabouts the flowchart shows the periodic reviews that must take place for gangs and gang member records in CalGang. Law enforcement agencies must periodically review a gang’s record and purged it when the record no longer meets criteria. Similarly, law enforcement agencies must review a gang member’s record at least annually. State guidelines require that law enforcement agencies review a gang member’s record to determine whether the record is current, accurate, relevant, complete and whether it continues to meet the needs and objectives of the responsible agency. If the gang member’s record no longer meets the criteria previously listed or if law enforcement agencies have not added new CalGang criteria for five years, the law enforcement agency must purge the record from CalGang.

Figure 4

Age of Users’ CalGang Accounts

This donut chart shows the percentage of active CalGang user accounts falling into four age categories. Of all active CalGang user accounts, 21 percent were between zero and two years old, 14 percent were between 2.01 and four years old, and 15 percent were between 4.01 and six years old. Further, 50 percent of all active CalGang user accounts are more than 6 years old. Because CalGang did not capture account creation dates until 2009, we were unable to determine the exact age of user accounts older than six years.

The source of the figure is the California State Auditor’s analysis of CalGang data obtained from the California Department of Justice as of November 23, 2015.

Figure 5

The Required Juvenile Notification and Contestation Process as Applied to CalGang

Figure 5 is a flowchart which depicts the two paths that law enforcement agencies might follow to fulfill the requirements to notify a juvenile and their parents or guardians—which we refer to as parents for short—of the juvenile’s gang designation. A juvenile is defined as an individual who is under 18 years of age. It also depicts the requirements a law enforcement agency must meet if a juvenile or their parent contest the gang designation.

The first path: the law enforcement officer determines that a juvenile meets the minimum criteria required to be designated as a gang member or gang affiliate. The law enforcement agency would send written notice to the juvenile and their parents regarding the designation before entering the juvenile into CalGang and affirming that the notice was sent.

The second path: the law enforcement officer determines that a juvenile meets the minimum criteria required to be designated as a gang member or gang affiliate. The law enforcement officer further determines that notifying the juvenile or their parents of the gang designation would compromise an ongoing criminal investigation or the juvenile’s health or safety. In this instance, an exception to making the notification exists and the law enforcement officer is not required to send the notice of gang designation to the juvenile or their parents. The law enforcement agency would enter the juvenile into CalGang and indicate in CalGang that the agency did not send a notification letter because of an exception. The law enforcement officer must document a detailed reason for the exception.

Contesting a gang designation: Upon receiving the written notification letter, the juvenile and/or their parents may contest the juvenile being designated as a gang member or affiliate by sending a written contestation to the law enforcement agency. The agency has 60 days to review the contestation and respond to the juvenile and their parents in writing stating its decision. If the agency disagrees with the contestation the juvenile’s record remains in CalGang. If the agency agrees with the contestation, the juvenile’s record is deleted from CalGang.

Figure 6

A Model for More Transparent and Accountable Oversight for a Shared Gang Database

Figure 6 is a flowchart of our recommendations for a more transparent and accountable oversight model for a shared gang database. The flowchart starts with the key legislative actions we recommend that the Legislature take. The Legislature should consider establishing requirements for CalGang—or any equivalent statewide shared gang database—in state law, make the California Department of Justice—which we call Justice for short—responsible for the database, and require the database to comply with federal regulations and important safeguards from Justice’s intelligence guidelines, which we refer to as state guidelines.

Next, the flowchart shows Justice and the key requirements we recommend for it. Specifically, Justice should engage in a regulatory process to define important requirements like gang member criteria, conduct or hire an external entity to conduct periodic audits, standardize training and ensuring it is provided to all end users and publish an annual report with key statistics and summary audit results. Based on the annual report, Justice would invite, assess, and act on public comments.

Justice is shown in the flowchart as being responsible to oversee database users. The key requirements we recommend for users are implementing supervisory review procedures and independent record control reviews. Users would periodically submit the results from record reviews to Justice.

The flowchart also includes a technical advisory committee which would collaborate with Justice and on which users voluntarily participate. The technical advisory committee’s key requirements are to advise Justice of best practices, database use, and database needs, to periodically review policies and procedures to provide suggestions to Justice on their improvements and to obtain public input when appropriate.

The flowchart distinguishes between public process and nonpublic process. Some of these processes are non-public because of the criminal intelligence information that may be reviewed or discussed such as the periodic audits, aspects of the technical advisory committee meeting, and user record requirements. On the contrary, many of these requirements create opportunities for public participation including the legislative and regulatory processes, open sessions of the technical advisory committee meetings, and the responses the public will give to Justice’s annual report.

Figure A

Rate of Survey Response by Agency Type

This bar chart shows how many agencies the California State Auditor sent our statewide survey to and how many agencies responded to the survey by agency type. There are six different agency types: district attorney offices, police departments, probation departments, school district police departments, sheriff’s offices, and state agencies. Overall, we sent the survey to 329 agencies and received 252 responses. We sent the survey to two district attorney offices and received one response. We sent the survey to two district attorney offices because each participated in maintaining a CalGang node. We sent the survey to 178 police departments and received responses from 138. We sent the survey to 59 probation departments and received responses from 46. We sent the survey to 22 school district police departments and received responses from 11. We sent the survey to 57 sheriff’s offices and received responses from 45. Finally, we sent the survey to 11 state agencies and received responses from all 11.