Despite the similarity in their names, the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is not affiliated with the Aryan Brotherhood, the notorious prison gang and crime syndicate founded in California in the 1960s with branches in the federal and state prison systems and outside prison walls.[2] In the 1980s, when the original Aryan Brotherhood was formed in San Quentin, a group of Texas inmates asked for permission to start a chapter in Texas, though the Aryan Brotherhood denied their request but the Texas inmates formed it anyway.[3] The ABT was nonetheless established in the 1980s, following the desegregation of Texas prisons and the dismantling of the "Building Tender",[4] or Trusty system, a system in which prison officials used other inmates to help maintain order in the prisons. These major and more or less simultaneous changes created an atmosphere of uncertainty and a lack of control that proved fertile breeding grounds for black, Hispanic and white race-based prison gangs. These gangs soon became the top predators in the Texas prison system.