CHARLESTON — Criminal street gangs are fanning across West Virginia to spread violence and peddle drugs, and for some, the business of crime is thriving behind prison bars, an Eastern Panhandle lawmaker disclosed Thursday.

Accompanied by two law enforcement officers, Delegate Tiffany Lawrence, D-Jefferson, persuaded the Senate Finance Committee to approve her bill aimed at providing police wider powers to combat what she describes as the growing menace of gangs.

The bill went before Chairman Walt Helmick, D-Pocahontas, since it contains a $2,500 fiscal note, the cost of financing an online anti-racial profiling training program added by the Senate’s judiciary panel.

Helmick’s committee also agreed on another Lawrence project — a bill hiking penalties for retailers and minors alike in the under-age sale of tobacco products.

“What’s scary the most for me is that our prison system has also been infiltrated,” Lawrence told the panel. “Some of our inmates currently incarcerated are actually creating gang networks and criminal enterprises while they’re still in prison.”

Afterward, Lawrence said she learned from State Police that some inmates at Mount Olive Correctional Complex are sending out letters in code to promote criminal activity.

Senators quizzed her at length and some offered praise for the legislation.

Sen. Ed Bowman, D-Hancock, who told of gangs creeping across the state line from Ohio to engage in crimes, applauded the provision that seeks to crack down on gangs recruiting students. “I think that’s a great deterrent right there,” he said.

Lawrence said 46 other states have such laws in force to deal with criminal gangs, and that makes West Virginia appealing to them now.

“We now see that criminals who know that West Virginia is pretty much an open state in this matter are coming in across our border, mainly in the Eastern Panhandle, through the Northern Panhandle and the southern perimeter, and they’re infiltrating our communities,” she said. “They’re using students, whom we’ve seen numerous times, as pawns.”

Since teenagers aren’t subject to as harsh penalties as adults, she said, gangs use them to execute crimes.

“They’re really preying on our youth,” she said.

Bowman’s sole criticism was he felt the measure should contain some minimum penalties, since a judge could hit an offender with a token slap on the wrist.

State Police Sgt. Shallon Oglesby and Charleston detective Eric Smith supported the bill at the finance hearing.

“There are numerous examples of street gang activity well documented in Charleston and throughout West Virginia,” Smith said.

He described the Lawrence bill as vital, explaining no law exists now to “attack an organization itself,” but rather the code focuses on individual acts by single perpetrators.

“This act will include the entire organization,” he said.

Moreover, although conspiracies can be prosecuted under current law, Smith told Sen. John Unger, D-Berkeley, this legislation would make it easier for prosecutors.

Lawrence said her original bill has been expanded so it includes insurance fraud.

“I think this is a momentous occasion,” Lawrence said after the bill gained unanimous committee approval. “We are now being cognizant of the fact that gang activity is very real and alive in the state.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com