Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon will testify in Annapolis today in favor of a bill that would reduce “good time” credits for inmates serving sentences for gun convictions, her aides said.
Dixon’s testimony, in front of the House of Delegates’ Judiciary Committee, is intended to urge the city’s “No Good Time for Gun Crime” bill, which would cut the number of good behavior credits an inmate with a gun conviction can receive per month from 10 to five days. If passed, the bill could keep gun offenders behind bars twice as long.
Dixon has made targeting gun crime a focal point of her administration. In her “state of the city” address delivered Monday, the mayor said she pledged to build upon reductions in homicides and nonfatal shootings posted in 2008.
In 2008, Baltimore’s 234 homicides were almost 50 fewer than the 282 in 2007, an 18 percent drop. It was the lowest number of killings in one year since 1988. Shootings dropped from 637 to 567, a decrease of 11 percent.
“I have said, many times before, there are too many illegal guns in our city. And these guns and the criminals who use them must be removed from our city,” Dixon said, according to a text of her speech.
Dixon said she planned to “mobilize a statewide effort to establish mandatory minimum sentences for criminals who are arrested with an illegal, loaded firearm.”
“I’ve heard the critics in Annapolis before, but illegal guns have only one purpose — to kill,” she said.
Dixon said she’s also supporting a bill called “No Bail for Gun Offenders with Prior Gun Convictions,” which would restrict a judge’s discretion to give bail to a defendant with prior gun offenses.
