DENVER — Colorado’s prison gangs are sophisticated groups with structured rules and an ever-evolving methodology that makes their criminal activity both inside and outside prison walls difficult to track, two Department of Corrections intelligence officers said Friday.

“We may generalize and call them gangs but … they’re organized,” Capt. Roseanna Jordan, operations supervisor for the department’s Unified Intelligence Team, said during a news conference about how corrections officials identify and manage gangs.

“They’re structured, and they have complexity,” she said. “We don’t just say gangs. We say ‘security threat groups’ because our security threat groups encompasses street gangs, prison gangs, terrorists, cartels and disruptive groups.”

The department gave the news briefing after a flood of questions about prison gangs and the handling of parolees in the wake of the shooting death of prisons chief Tom Clements.

Authorities believe Clements was gunned down in the doorway of his Monument-area home March 19 by Evan Ebel, a recent parolee who belonged to the 211 Crew white supremacist prison gang. Investigators are looking into the possibility that Clements’ slaying was a gang hit orchestrated within prison.

DOC spokeswoman Alison Morgan said the department organized the briefing as an “educational opportunity” about prison gangs.

“We will not answer questions about the 211 prison gang,” she said. “Please do not even raise the questions.”

Clements’ high-profile killing has prompted new policies, including requiring parole officers to respond to tamper alerts on electronic monitoring bracelets within two hours and rounding up absconders every month.

Ebel, who had slipped out of his ankle bracelet, also is suspected of killing a pizza delivery driver in the Denver area two days before Clements’ killing and possibly using his uniform to get Clements to open his door.

Ebel, who was shot and killed in a shoot out with Texas authorities, was paroled Jan. 28.

Morgan said Ebel, who spent much of his time in prison in solitary confinement, successfully completed a pre-release program to help offenders in so-called administrative segregation transition back into the community.

“He was in that program from mid-September until early November of 2012,” she said.

The program was initiated in August 2011 under Clements, a leader in prison reform.

“Two years ago, 47 percent of offenders from administrative segregation were releasing directly to the community. We’re very proud that we’ve reduced that number to 24 percent,” Morgan said.

“We need to continue to reduce the number of offenders who are releasing directly from administrative segregation to the community. That’s a critical objective that remains within the department’s strategic objectives. It was an important strategic objective for Mr. Clements,” she said.

The department, which houses about 20,000 prisoners statewide, defines a security threat group as a group of three or more people “with a common interest, bond or activity characterized by criminal or delinquent conduct … with a potential to create a security threat within DOC.”

Jordan, who has worked in corrections for 20 years, and Lt. Eva Little, an intelligence officer who has worked in corrections for 13 years, said there are a handful of stages or levels before an offender progresses to a security threat group.

“A new offender may enter a facility with no knowledge to prison life, and they find similarities in one person or others,” Little said. “What they might find as a similarity could be a hometown, maybe a neighborhood or a geographical area. They may also find that they have cultural or racial differences to bond together, and they have a common enemy.”

Little said the percentage of prison gangs is high but not all gang members engage in criminal activity. It is not a crime to belong to a security threat group, they said.

“That’s why we solely place this on their behavior,” Jordan said.

The department identifies gang members through artwork, such as tattoos. But there’s “a lot of covert messaging” that goes on, too, Little said.

As an example, Jordan and Little pointed to a picture of a group of inmates. To the untrained eye, the inmates appear to be posing for a picture. But they’re positioned in such a way to spell out their gang name, they said.

Jordan and Little said gangs have well-defined rules and even bylaws.

“We have very charismatic individuals that are involved in a security threat group,” Jordan said. “We have very educated individuals. In one of the certain security threat groups, there is a set of books that these individuals need to read prior to becoming part of that.”

Jordan and Little said gangs communicate through letters and family members and are constantly changing their communication methods to outsmart intelligence officers.

“As we learn something new, of course they’re going to go and invent something different,” Jordan said. “It’s with due diligence on our facilities staff to ensure that shakedowns are occurring, and they’re informed of what to look for.”

Jordan and Little said the efforts of the Unified Intelligence Team, which gathers information to help identify and manage prison gangs, has paid off, though the only example they would give is of preventing an escape.

“We probably prevent more than has been published,” Jordan said.

Neither Jordan nor Little could say how much of the gangs’ criminal activity spills into the community.

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Alison Morgan, center, a spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Corrections responds to questions about prison gangs during a news conference on Friday, April 12, 2013, at the Colorado Parole Division headquarters in Denver. Prison intelligence officers Lt. Eva Little, left, and Capt. Roseanna Jordan presented a program covering gangs in Colorado’s prisons. Photo by ED ANDRIESKI/The Associated Press