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Prisoners who use cellphones to conduct gang activity would face a minimum five-year sentence after the Georgia House voted Wednesday to stiffen penalties to combat organized crime.
The House voted 106-60 to send House Bill 874 to the Senate. Many of the "no" votes came from Democrats who said the state should not start implementing mandatory minimum sentences after spending the past several years dismantling similar laws.
But the bill's sponsor, state Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, said the only way to stop prisoners from using cellphones to operate their gangs is to affect how long they stay incarcerated.
“The safest place for a gang to conduct its activity is inside our Georgia prisons,” he said. “Georgia has a full-fledged crisis with this issue.”
But state Rep. Al Williams, D-Midway, and others said the state should not hamstring judges to determine punishment.
“Be very careful here,” he said. “It’s nothing new to get threats from jail. My goodness, (Al) Capone did it. The Gambino family did it in the ’40s and ’50s.”
State Rep. David Wilkerson, D-Austell, said Reeves' bill "takes us back to the days before I got here where we just decided to lock people up."
But Judiciary Non-Civil Committee Chairman Rich Golick, R-Smyrna, said the problem has become so vast new tools are needed.
“Criminal street gangs in this state represent the single biggest threat to public safety in this state right now,” he said. “It has permeated urban, suburban, exurban and rural jurisdictions like a cancer. It’s not the next frontier, it’s the current frontier of what law enforcement is facing.”
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