But the AB are only on the West coast prisons? Never tried to create to expand in the East coast?
Demographics. In NY/NJ the vast majority of the economically deprived neighborhoods are African American, Dominican or Puerto Rican so the respective big gangs like United Blood Nation, Trinitarios or Latin Kings are gonna hold the most sway in prison because they got the numbers. The white blue collar neighborhoods in for instance NY and NJ were traditionally very LCN-influenced because Italian Americans were the (generally speaking) economically less well-off white community over there. The last "poor" white community that migrated in large numbers to the West Coast were rural whites from Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri. Criminals from that community had no "Mafia" tradition so they gravitated more towards biker gangs out of which the white supremacist groups sprung.
