Mich. prisons to offer smoking cessation programs for inmates and staff
The Detroit Free Press
LANSING -- After experimenting with partial bans for the last 15 years, state prison officials plan to completely eliminate smoking and the use of other tobacco products by prisoners and staff early next year, extending an existing ban on smoking in prison buildings to outdoor property.
State officials said they believe a blanket prohibition on tobacco use will lead to healthier inmates. About 70% of the state’s 50,209 prisoners are smokers -- three times the rate of the general population.
Smoking has been banned in prison housing units since 1997, but inmates and staff are permitted to smoke outside buildings. Some inmate housing is reserved for nonsmokers.
The target date for implementation is Feb. 1, but intermediate steps -- including scaling back tobacco sales in prison stores -- are set to begin within weeks, Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan said last week. Prisons also are to offer smoking cessation programs for inmates and staff, though details have not been finalized.
“It won’t happen overnight, but we should see healthier inmates long-term ... and that should translate into some health care savings” for taxpayers, Marlan said.
Not everyone is hopeful
Some of the people who live and work in the prisons are less certain.
Inmate Kirk Brown, 37, of Port Huron, who is serving a 6- to 30-year sentence on drug charges, said he has smoked since he was 25. He said he and other prisoners use tobacco to “relieve stress.”
“This is a very stressful environment,” said Brown, who is housed at the state’s prison complex in Jackson.
Brown said he understands why the department wants to reduce health care costs, but he said he believes there will be trade-offs, predicting that inmates will eat more and gain weight and drink more coffee, possibly leading to edgier prisoners.
But Marlan said inmates have not been served coffee for three years -- saving the state about $500,000 a year.
Mel Grieshaber, executive director of the Michigan Corrections Organization, which represents about 9,000 corrections officers in state prisons, said the rules announced last week are “too rigid.”
“We’re concerned about health,” he said. “But they don’t know if they will save money.”
Under the ban, no tobacco products will be allowed on prison property except in locked vehicles owned by employees in prison parking lots. In addition to corrections officers, another 4,000 employees work in state prisons.
Grieshaber said other state employees, including those who work for the Department of Corrections in Lansing, may smoke outside their buildings.
Since 1992, smoking has been banned inside state buildings but not outside them, even if it’s on state property.
Bans already in place
Once commonplace, smoking behind bars has been diminishing rapidly since the 1990s.
National surveys indicate that two-thirds of states ban smoking in housing units. Smoking is not permitted in federal prisons, nor in many county jails, including those in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb.
Marlan said smoke-free incarceration elsewhere has been “generally successful.”
But Grieshaber said banning cigarettes and other tobacco products, legal in the outside world, will lead to a black market business inside the prison walls.
Michigan prison stores currently sell a pack of generic cigarettes for $4.50-$5. Last year, tobacco product sales inside Michigan prisons totaled nearly $4.6 million -- about 15% of all sales in prison stores.
Adam Douglas, a housing supervisor at the Mound Correctional Facility in Detroit, said officers and inmates there generally are aware that the no-smoking signs will soon go up, but they’re not sure what to expect.
Some officers regard the new policy as “them being punished even though they didn’t break the law,” Douglas said.
Prisoners are more fatalistic.
“A lot of them say, ‘When they make me, I’ll stop,’ ” Douglas said.
At least most of them will stop. Possessing or using illegal drugs has always been against prison rules. Still, marijuana and other drugs occasionally get inside prisons.
Marlan said that in December, 47 inmates tested positive for banned substances, including marijuana, alcohol and opiates, about 1.7% of those tested.
Ciopyright 2008 Detroit Free Press