The Aryan Brotherhood is a neo-Nazi prison gang and an organized crime syndicate that is based in the United States and has an estimated 15,000–20,000 members both inside and outside prisons. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has characterized it as "the nation's oldest major white supremacist prison gang and a national crime syndicate" while the Anti-Defamation League calls it the "oldest and most notorious racist prison gang in the United States". According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Aryan Brotherhood makes up an extremely low percentage of the entire US prison population, but it is responsible for a disproportionately large number of prison murders.

Thomas Edward Silverstein was an American criminal who spent the last 42 years of his life in prison after being convicted of four separate murders while imprisoned for armed robbery, one of which was overturned. Silverstein spent the last 36 years of his life in solitary confinement for killing corrections officer Merle Clutts at the Marion Penitentiary in Illinois. Prison authorities described him as a brutal killer and a former leader of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. Silverstein maintained that the dehumanizing conditions inside the prison system contributed to the three murders he committed. He was the longest-held prisoner in solitary confinement within the Bureau of Prisons at the time of his death. Correctional officers refused to talk to Silverstein out of respect for Clutts.