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| S.C. Prisons to Go Smokeless by 2005 |
| By The State |
| Published: 04/07/2003 |
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Prison currency - tobacco - is about to become more golden, a move critics say could ignite the state's already tense prisons. Starting April 1, tobacco products sold in prison commissaries will cost 10 percent more. Prices will double for the most popular items, prisons director Jon Ozmint said. Another price increase is planned for the fall. The price increases, announced internally Feb. 24, are part of his plan to make the agency smoke-free for inmates and employees by spring 2005. Employees will start seeing the changes by midsummer, but Ozmint said there is no firm deadline for banning smoking for the nearly 23,000 inmates in 29 prisons. The tobacco crackdown comes as the Corrections Department has lost 1,000 employees, including 490 officers; is operating with a $28 million debt this year alone; has crowded prisons with inmates sleeping three to a cell and on gymnasium floors; and violence appears to be escalating. Because of those conditions, Ozmint said he's moving slowly toward a smoke-free agency. 'All we've done is raise ..prices. We've specifically given ourselves time to do it in a manner that preserves safety.' But critics say the new tobacco policy might be a spark in a tinderbox. 'If he wants a riot, I dare say he's found a way to do it,' Lillian Swanson, head of S.C. Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants, a prisoner rights group. Prisoners smoke to relieve the stress of life behind bars and they barter with tobacco, said Swanson and a former inmate. Addicted smokers often get irritable when they try to break the habit. Ozmint said he's making the change because taxpayers are paying higher medical bills fueled by artificially low tobacco prices that encourage inmates to smoke. Smoking makes them sicker, he said. Since July 2000, inmate medical bills have climbed $6 million, said Ozmint, but he had no figures on how much is tobacco-related or how much money the policy will save in health care costs. 'We're doing this because it's the right thing to do,' said the new director, a career prosecutor who took the Corrections job in January despite having no experience in running prisons. 'It's wrong to make the taxpayer foot the bill for smoking-related illnesses.' Yet the agency's own figures show the typical inmate is freed within two years, which affords little time for tobacco-caused symptoms. Almost 90 percent get out within five years. The chairman of the Senate committee that oversees prisons backs Ozmint's judgment, though he acknowledged the move is debatable. 'If he thinks it's a good idea, I support him,' said Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville. |
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