By Ed Anderson
Times-Picayune
BATON ROUGE, La. — State and local prison inmates, workers who oversee them and visitors to the jails will face tougher smoking restrictions starting Aug. 15, the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections said Tuesday.
While the 2006 law that banned smoking in most public places took affect Jan. 1, 2007, corrections department spokeswoman Pam Laborde said it gave prison officials until Aug. 15 to comply.
Avoyelles Correctional Center in Cottonport and Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson served as the pilot program for the system’s smoking restrictions, putting them in place May 15, Laborde said.
Dixon Warden Steve Rader said there have been no incidents as a result of the smoking ban. He said the prison has designated areas where inmates, employees and visitors can smoke during the day.
Inmates with the urge to light up after hours will have to wait until the next morning.
“They are going to have to make it through the night,” Rader said.
The restrictions apply to local jails as well as those run by private contractors for the state.
Laborde said the designated smoking hours, which are still to be determined, will be uniform throughout the state prison system. She said the law also will apply to the prison employees and inmates’ families and friends who visit.
Corrections Secretary James LeBlanc said the department has conducted educational and training programs to implement the restriction.
The 2006 legislation, sponsored by Sen. Rob Marionneaux, D-Livonia, imposed a ban on smoking in all public buildings, restaurants, schools, hospitals and office buildings. It made exceptions for bars and casinos and allowed office building operators to designate outside areas for employees who want to smoke.
LeBlanc said that smoking inside public buildings and workplaces operated by his agency, including work-release centers, also is prohibited.
“An indoor smoking ban is a big deal for both offenders and staff, but it’s the right thing to do,” LeBlanc said in a written statement. “The department started the educational process months ago in an effort to ease all parties toward this significant change.”
Rader said that some areas of the prisons already were off-limits to smoking, such as classrooms, chapels, cell blocks and infirmaries. The main areas that will be affected by the expanded ban, he said, are dorms and recreational rooms in the prisons.
Corrections Medical Director Dr. Raman Singh said the goal of the ban is to create a safer, smoke-free environment for all who live and work at the facilities. Singh said some employees and offenders “see the ban as an opportunity to quit smoking for good.”
Laborde said inmates who have been disciplined and are segregated from the rest of the population already are banned from having tobacco “under any circumstances.”
The law calls for fines ranging from $25 to $500 depending on the number of violations or for non-compliance by an employer, but monetary fines probably will not be assessed inmates. Instead, Laborde said, an inmate could be “written up for disciplinary reasons, (and) penalties can run the gamut depending on the particular situation and the past disciplinary history of the offender.”
Laborde said the prisoner sanctions could include a reprimand, extra work duty, loss of minor privileges -- like recreation time or being denied use of CDs -- to loss of visiting privileges.
Copyright 2009 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company