July 1
CALIFORNIA:
Inmates on death row are included in prison smoking ban
Inmates in all California's prisons will face a smoking ban from today, in
a move that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger hopes will save $265 million
(148 million) a year in healthcare costs.
The ban will also affect prisoners on death row. Warders at Folsom State
Prison, east of Sacramento, will now be asked to protect inmates health
before leading them for a lethal injection or to the gas chamber.
As of today, if inmates are caught with cigarettes they could face extra
work duty, loss of privileges or, on a 3rd offence, a longer sentence. Tim
Leslie, the Republican assemblyman who pioneered the ban, said: "This is a
good, common-sense measure that will save money and lives. It's good for
the states 80,000 non-smoking prisoners, because they don't have to
breathe someone else's smoke. It's good for the smoking prisoners because
their health will improve. And it's good for California because it will
save in smoking-related inmate healthcare costs."
Although Republicans have predicted huge savings on medical costs, critics
say that the ban will increase smuggling, extortion and violence.
When Oregon enforced a similar ban in 1995, inmates set fires in protest.
However, Oregon says that the ban has been a success, with a significant
drop in medical expenses and maintenance costs. At first, it encouraged
prisoners with half-priced nicotine patches and trays of free vegetables.
It is thought that about half of Californias 163,000 prisoners are
addicted to tobacco. As a result, when the Folsom canteen tested a tobacco
ban this year, tins of Bulger tobacco, which usually cost $11, began
changing hands for $200. "A lot of these guys, they have been smoking 20
or 30 years and then, boom, they take their tobacco away." Mario Avila,
45, a non-smoking prisoner at Folsom, told the Los Angeles Times. "It's
like taking a baby's bottle away."
Critics have pointed to data from Maine, which showed a quadrupling of
assaults after it enforced a smoking ban 5 years ago. The ban will also
affect the 30,000 employees of the Department of Corrections who work at
California's 33 prisons and camps. Many of those employees work deep
within the prisons and cannot step outside for a cigarette break. To
compensate, they are being offered "quitting classes."
8 of California's prisons already enforce tobacco bans, either because
they are used as medical facilities or because they serve as reception
areas.
In other Californian prisons, inmates are forbidden from smoking in their
cells but are allowed to light up in recreation yards and outdoor areas.
At Folsom, Latino inmates recently used a "lockdown" on warring black gang
members to buy all the remaining inventory of tobacco at the canteen.
"They cornered the market," Michael Johnson, a 45-year-old black prisoner,
complained. "So now all the other cats are going to have to pay these
enormous prices and watch the [Latinos] make a huge profit."
(source: The Times)
