Ban Ignites Business Behind Bars No-Smoking Rule Forces Inmates To Find Other Ways To Get Cigarettes

Nicotine-addicted inmates at the Spokane County Jail are extremely protective of the Holy Bible in their cells.

It makes for a great smoke.

Inmates rip out the thin, crinkly pages and roll cigarettes, a forbidden item in jail. The paper is perfect for the job, they say, and in their world cigarettes sell for $20 each.

“It’s big, big business,” said one three-packs-a-day smoker who’s been in jail over a month. “You get very creative when you need a smoke and can’t get one.”

Since the no-smoking rule at the jail went into effect last fall, inmates started capitalizing on a new trade: nicotine fits. More than 80 percent of the jail’s inmates have them, so business is always good.

“If someone smuggles cigarettes in here, they make a lot of money,” said Dennis Doney, an inmate who is trying to kick his habit after spending $100 in four days on the overpriced jail cigarettes.

The business works like this: Inmates who manage to sneak smokes behind bars quickly spread the word to potential customers. If someone wants to buy one, they have a friend visit the jail and deposit money in the seller’s bank account, called “putting money on the books.”

Every day, inmates check the amount of cash on their books and can use the money to buy items from the jail’s commissary.

Usually, the cigarettes must be paid for up front. Some inmates, though, have been known to ring up cigarette debts of $200 or more. If they don’t pay before they’re released, sellers will settle the debt with their fists.

“There’ll be three or four of them and they’ll just beat the guy up bad,” said Steve Turner, a non-smoker who sold cigarettes for two months in jail before

being released last week. “And then they still want their money. They usually get it, too. They have people on the outside who make sure.”

Jailed sellers usually get their product from visitors, who sneak the smokes through slots in the glass booths that lawyers use to pass legal papers back and forth. Some attorneys also supply their clients with cigarettes, inmates said.

Relatives or friends may pass tobacco to inmates when they appear for court. Other jailed smokers will grab handfuls of burned-down cigarette butts from ashtrays as they head to see the judge.

Behind bars, even the butts sell for $5 each.

“You can take one regular cigarette and break it into four or five little pieces and (inmates) will buy them,” said Doney, in jail for domestic violence. “They just need to smoke.”

Jail officials, however, insist they’ve had few problems with inmates since the no-smoking rule took effect.

They acknowledge commissary revenues dropped $2,000 a month from lost cigarette sales after the ban, but say they doubt cigarette smuggling is as common as inmates claim. They also say they rarely ever catch anyone lighting up.

“We’ve confiscated cigarettes from inmates, but not any more than drugs or knives or needles or all the other things they’re not allowed to have,” Lt. Edee Hunt said. “Enforcing the cigarette rule has not been a big problem for us.”

When the no-smoking rule began last fall, jailer Gail Bass taught a class designed to help inmates quit their habit. At first only a few inmates decided to take the course, until word spread that Bass’s students got free bags of popcorn to help them get through their cigarette cravings.

Bass said she also advised inmates to drink plenty of water, suck on menthol-flavored cough drops and snap rubber bands around their wrists whenever they had an urge to smoke.

The class didn’t make complete non-smokers out of many of her students, but several told Bass they felt better knowing how to cope with the rule while they were behind bars.

“I’m a smoker and so I know how difficult the policy is for them,” Bass said. “But what are they going to do? A rule’s a rule.”

Bass is allowed to light up with other workers in two specially-vented break rooms inside the jail. The jailers’ union fought successfully for the right to continue smoking during work hours after the ban went into effect.

Inmates complain they can smell the smoke on the jailers’ clothes and breath and it makes their nicotine cravings much worse.

They’re forced to puff on expensive pieces of cigarettes inside their cells, the inmates said.

“You go in there and smoke it real quick and fan the air and squirt shampoo or conditioner around to hide the smell,” said an inmate named Steve who didn’t want his last name used. “It only takes like a few seconds.”

If a smoke detector inside the cell goes off, inmates said it rarely poses a problem. The alarms are sensitive - even disinfectant spray can set them off - and jailers just give a casual look inside the cell, inmates said.

“They walk by and if they don’t see fire, they call it a false alarm,” said Steve, who is serving a sentence for driving while intoxicated. “There are a lot of false alarms. Probably because everybody’s smoking.”

, DataTimes