Prisons:

Lights out in the big house

Inmate blowback, black market feared when state goes tobaccoless

Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Chris Morris

Prediction: July 1, 2009, is going to be a nasty day for thousands of Nevada residents.

That’s the day the Nevada Department of Corrections bans all tobacco products, on all department grounds, for inmates and corrections officers alike.

About 70 percent of inmates everywhere smoke. If that rate holds true in Nevada, then about 9,100 of our felons are addicted to nicotine. So are a few hundred of their keepers, by the way. Cigarette smoking is limited to outdoor areas in Nevada’s detention facilities — prisons, work camps. Chewing tobacco can be used inside them, except where food is prepared and served.

With the forthcoming ban, the prison system is getting in line with the statewide movement toward more limits on smoking, spokeswoman Suzanne Pardee said. It is also hoping to reduce high health care costs that come with the treatment of tobacco-related ailments. This is a dance Nevada has come to late. A 2007 study found the state was one of only 20 without a total smoking ban in prisons.

But there’s a flip side to banning tobacco behind bars. Foremost is the concern that inmates will become agitated and lash out. They were told a year ago the ban was coming and still have six months to steel themselves, but that doesn’t mean inmates are trying to taper off their smoking habits. State prison guard Kevin Ranft, for one, said he isn’t aware of any inmate who is trying hard to quit.

As a regional vice president for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Local 4041 — the union that represents state prison guards — Ranft is worried about what’s going to happen when thousands of felons simultaneously suffer withdrawal.

“Our biggest fear is inmates acting out,” he said. “There is a safety and security risk that we feel the department should really evaluate.”

Ranft says his union would like to see the prison system offer smoking cessation classes to inmates, something Pardee says the administration is working on. Pardee knew of no plans to add additional staff on July 1, however. Nor will the corrections department be handing out nicotine patches or tobacco-replacement gum.

Perhaps this is because of lessons learned elsewhere: When inmates were provided patches in Alberta, Canada, for example, news reports revealed they devised ways to smoke the chemicals inside.

But the immediate risk of cranky cold-turkey inmates may pale in the face of a longer-term problem: The birth of a black market.

When California banned all tobacco in its correctional facilities three years ago, reports of cigarette smuggling jumped. So did the price of tobacco behind bars. In 2007, the Associated Press reported that an illicit pack of cigarettes was selling for $125 in Northern California prisons. A can of tobacco worth $10 on the streets, it was reported, could be turned into hundreds of dollars worth of individual cigarettes behind bars.

Tobacco serves a number of functions in prison. It is used as a “surrogate currency, a means of social control, as a symbol of freedom in a group with few rights and privileges, a stress reliever and as a social lubricant,” according to a small Australian study that weighed the pros and cons of prison tobacco bans.

With a black market come other problems. In California, prison staff members were caught supplementing their salaries by smuggling tobacco to inmates. At Folsom State Prison, a cook told authorities he was earning roughly $1,000 a week smuggling tobacco behind bars, the Associated Press reported. His illegal enterprise was more lucrative than his day job. In another instance, an inmate paroled from California’s Pelican Bay prison was discovered back on prison grounds hours after his release carrying a pillowcase stuffed with 50 ounces of rolling tobacco. His plan, it was reported, was to throw the stash, worth thousands, over a fence to an inmate.

Despite everybody’s best efforts, tobacco will find its way behind bars after the ban. Inmates already secretly smoke cigarettes inside their cells despite rules against it. The problem is so prevalent that guards do not have enough isolation cells for all the rule-breakers and must settle for writing them up and giving them extra work duties.

Though Ranft is confident in his fellow guards’ ability to stop visitors from smuggling in contraband tobacco, no system is air tight.

“They’ll try to find ways to manipulate the system until the tobacco runs dry,” Ranft said.

There’s not much to buy behind bars, either, so tobacco sales are big business — about 9 percent of total canteen sales, or just over $1 million annually, Pardee said. Tobacco goods sell for $5 to $7 each, depending on the product. The profit from canteen sales is transferred to the inmate welfare fund, which pays for inmate programs, recreation equipment and similar expenditures, Pardee said. Some critics of tobacco bans have suggested this financial loss could hurt inmates, but the prison administration figures if inmates can’t spend the money on tobacco, they’ll spend it on something else at the canteen, so the welfare fund won’t suffer much, if at all.

But the effect on black market profits also remains to be seen. Inmates in other states have been known to fight over control of illegal tobacco sales — just another reason the prison system better have a good reason for enforcing the total ban, said Gary Peck, director of the Nevada American Civil Liberties Union.

“When these kinds of policies are implemented, what ends up happening is that inmates create an underground market, and with an underground market, come all the problems you associate — graft, corruption, violence,” he said. “There are lots of ways they could regulate the use of tobacco products without a smoking ban.”

These regulations are a far cry from earlier prison policy. A 1986 study revealed that more than half of all prisons were providing inmates tobacco free of charge, and almost none of those prisons provided inmates with smoke-free living quarters. Today, a study conducted by researchers at the Ohio State University College of Public Health found that American prisons have almost completely reversed their tobacco policies — no prisoner was being given free tobacco in 2007, yet 96 percent were offered smoke-free living areas.

Still, exactly what Nevada’s felons will do when they are no longer allowed to chew tobacco or smoke in the prison yard is anyone’s guess.

In May, the United Kingdom’s Observer newspaper reported that inmates at a prison in the Isle of Man went on a hunger strike after the announcement of a plan to go smoke-free. The paper also reported that “some have resorted to smoking dried-out tea bags wrapped in pages of the Bible.”

Discussion: 8 comments so far…

By acrosby85254

12/11/08 at 6:31 a.m.

Suggest removal

I'm sure they will find something or someone else to 'smoke'....holla if you hear me!!!
By geezelouise

12/11/08 at 7 a.m.

Suggest removal

How can this even be legal? Smoking is not a crime.
By LasVegas2009

12/11/08 at 11:51 a.m.

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Smoking is banned in most prisons in the United States, Nevada is just one of the few left where its allowed. Legal? geezelouise you are behind the times. Smoking is a pleasure that prison inmates dont deserve. Why let these criminals have any pleasures. Their victims didnt get a choice, so why should they? They are the property of the state and as such should do as they are told. When you cross the line to commit a crime you need to realise that its your own freedom you are putting in question.
By frankcourser

12/11/08 at 12:13 p.m.

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A ban on smoking in prisons and jails has only created more crime. Colorado did it and fired 30 guards the 1st month. California has banned tobacco since last year! And the inmates are still smoking! They just pay more for it! Guards, staff and visitors can make tens of thousands of dollars bringing in tobacco. Prison gangs profit from it as do those that bring it in! It is far worse banning tobacco from a crime standpoint and It has only made things worse!
By LasVegas2009

12/11/08 at 3:01 p.m.

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Just put anyone that gets caught with tabacoo in the hole for a month and see how long before they all quit. Thats what they did in Arkansas they had a choice if they got caught smoking either hoe squad (work) or hole. After 3 weeks no one smoked again. In Memphis TN it took even less time to correct the behavior. Put these gang bangers to work and quit letting them lay around smoking all day.
By WilliamClarke

12/11/08 at 4:37 p.m.

Suggest removal

As a retired corrections officer from the NDOC it's great the the prison will no longer permit smoking. Now on the other hand there is going to be some problems.

If you want to monitor the problems you should vist:
http://www.nevadacorruptions.com

This site will give you all a better insight to what is happening in state government as well as the Nevada Department of Corrections.
By davidwayneosedach

12/11/08 at 5:59 p.m.

Suggest removal

The prisoners do not need tobacco. Nor do they deserve it. Here in San Diego you can't smoke on beaches and in Parks. Why should Nevada Prisoners be given this drug in jail? Besides it costs a bundle to clean up after.
By oldgirl

12/12/08 at 4:38 a.m.

Suggest removal

You ask, am I a smoker? Well, I could be, if I chose to be, but then it isn't the question here!

Ask a black person how it felt to be discriminated against because of the color of their skin!

You say smoking is different? It's because you are not black! Or you are not a smoker, but are you FAT???

When this government is done harrassing the blacks! And the smoking craze is over! It will be you FAT people next! It's already started!!! you're just so busy looking at everyone else's faults, that you don't have time to see what's going to get you!

But you know what? It'll be too late by then!

Descrimination is a cover up, and a fake! Why does the government want to harrass the smokers? Because this greedy Govermnent regulaters allowed harmful chemicals in cigarettes, that have killed thousands of Americans, and they want to cover it up before it turns and bites them in the butt!

And prejeduce energizer bunnies like so many ignorant American people are today, are too stupid to realize how stupid they actually are!

I guess it all goes to show that nothing has changed here in Nazi America!

Conform or be riticuled, and be killed!
Smokers are not worthy of health care!
Lord have mercy on America!

by DianalynWeese-Little
oldgirlswork@yahoo.com