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Smoking ban lifted at site of prison riot  

A state official says a smoking ban has been lifted at a Kentucky prison that was the site of a fiery riot last week, but inmates are no longer allowed to keep matches or lighters with them.

Jennifer Brislin of the Justice Cabinet says the ban was lifted this week at Northpoint Training Center in Burgin. Smoking had been banned there since the Aug. 21 riot in which inmates set fire to several buildings, many of them possibly beyond repair.

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Smoking ban imposed after Ky. prison riot  

A top state public safety official said he found some buildings nearly gutted, with windows shattered, computer equipment and light fixtures slammed against walls and toilets destroyed, when he inspected a central Kentucky prison Monday in the aftermath of a riot.

Justice and Public Safety Secretary J. Michael Brown said the damage at the Northpoint Training Center is so severe, he expects several buildings will have to be torn down and rebuilt.

"While it may look like the walls are standing, I'm not an engineer, but I understand just the heat from that can cause structural cracks," Brown said. "I believe most of (the buildings) will have to be razed, and we'll have to start from scratch."

Officials banned smoking — at least temporarily — after the Friday riot and were forced to relocate more than half of the facility's 1,200 prisoners. . . .

He said the prison had allowed smoking — including matches — in designated outdoor areas, but that policy was lifted after several fires were set Friday during the riot. Many Kentucky prisons were going to a smoking ban anyway, Brown said.

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'Da Vinci' rapist beats up sex offender 'The Thing' in prison row over tobacco smoke  

A SEX beast nicknamed The Thing was left bloody and battered in a behind-bars row with the notorious Da Vinci rapist.

"Thing" Kevin Fyffe - a serial offender first jailed for rape in 1988 - ended up in hospital after the confrontation at Saughton jail in Edinburgh.

Attacker Robert Greens - serving 10 years for raping a Dutch student near the chapel which features in the book The Da Vinci Code - is now locked up 23 hours a day as punishment.

Prison sources said the row had broken out over Fyffe's pungent tobacco smoke.

Greens, 31, who had the cell next to Fyffe, 43, in the sex offenders' wing, punched him several times in the face before officers dragged him away. . . .

A source said last night: "Greens has a terrible temper and he flipped.

"He gave Fyffe a proper doing. It apparently all started out as a row over the cheap tobacco Fyffe smokes. He smokes pipe tobacco in his roll-ups and it stinks.

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Correctional Facilities Ready For Full Ban On Indoor Smoking  

Voluntary smoking cessation programs at two state correctional facilities have proven successful in the first months of implementation as the Department readies for a full ban on indoor smoking by August 15, 2009.

State correctional facilities are on target to comply with the Louisiana Smokefree Air Act, passed by the Louisiana Legislature in 2006. However, a provision in the law gave state correctional facilities more time to implement the indoor smoking ban.

Department of Public Safety and Corrections Secretary James M. Le Blanc says the Department has revised its smoking policy for both offenders and staff and educational programs and training have been implemented department-wide. Smoking inside areas of public buildings and places of employment operated by the Department, including work release programs, is prohibited for all employees, visitors and offenders beginning August 15, 2009.

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Prison inmates, visitors, staff banned from smoking in lockups starting Aug. 15  

BATON ROUGE -- State and local prison inmates, the staff who oversee them and visitors to the jails will be restricted in their smoking habits starting Aug. 15, the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections said today.

Department spokeswoman Pam Laborde said that the 2006 law that banned smoking in most public places took affect Jan. 1, 2007, but its implementation for prisons was delayed.

Two prisons --- Avoyelles Correctional Center in Cottonport and Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson -- served as the pilot program for the system's smoking restrictions and put them in place May 15, Laborde said.

Dixon Warden Steve Rader said that there have been no incidents as a result of the smoking ban. He said that the the prison has designated areas where inmates, employees and visitors can smoke during the day.

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Tobacco use banned for all at Hillsborough detention facilities 

TAMPA - Tobacco products will be banned from the grounds of all Department of Detention locations in Hillsborough County, effective Oct. 1.

Inmates already hadn't been allowed to use tobacco products, but the change will affect detention staff personnel and the public, sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter said.

Department of Detention locations include Orient Road Jail, Falkenburg Road Jail, a juvenile assessment center, a criminal registration area and a work release center.

A similar ban will be coming at other Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office locations, Col. Jim Previtera told staff members in a recent memo.

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Tobacco barred from prison 

The Marion Correction Institution (MCI), which consists of the minimum-custody facility on N.C. 226 South and the close-custody facility on Old Glenwood Road, are among 26 prisons in North Carolina that will go completely tobacco free today. The units are joined by six administrative offices.

No inmates, employees, visitors or vendors will be allowed to possess tobacco products of any kind on the grounds or inside the buildings.

It's the beginning of the Division of Prisons' phase-out of tobacco products on its properties statewide. Units in other counties will eventually go tobacco free by the end of the year.

"What we're trying to get people to see are the health benefits associated with this move," said Randy Teague, assistant superintendent of programs at MCI. "A lot of the inmates aren't happy about it, and, with the employees, it's a mixed bag."

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Pamlico correction facility goes smoking free early  

A smoking ban on the property of the Pamlico Correctional Institution in Bayboro goes into effect Monday.

According to a release from the N.C. Department of Correction, a state senate bill prohibits smoking and the possession of tobacco products outside locked vehicles on the grounds of correctional institutions.

The bill goes into effect statewide March 1, 2010; however, Pamlico Correctional Institution will begin Monday.

The ban will affect staff, inmates, visitors and vendors who come on the grounds of the prison

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• Skolnick to allow tobacco during Indian ritual  

Director of Corrections Howard Skolnik told the Nevada Indian Commission Wednesday he will make an exception to the prison system's new tobacco ban for American Indian religious ceremonies.

Those ceremonies, which conclude with participants smoking a ceremonial pipe, will be allowed to have the limited amount of tobacco needed to share the pipe.

Skolnik said he is aware that will cause some inmates to suddenly develop an interest in sweat lodge ceremonies just to get access to tobacco.

He banned tobacco products from the prison system, for inmates and staff, effective July 1.

“You'll have 100 inmates turn out for the sweat lodge because they can use tobacco there,” he said.

And he said he anticipates that other religious groups in the prison system will want to add a sweat lodge ceremony to their practices.

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ARCHIVE: They'd Walk a Mile for a Camel, If Only Anyone Would Let Them (PDF) 

Cumberland County Jail in Portland. Maine. is full of nicotine fiends who puffed up such apall that smoking was banned last November. Since then, cigarette smuggling has been creative enough to light up a drug lord's eyes. . . .

Some inmates palm cigarettes from spouses while embracing during visits. One prisoner's wife wrapped cigarettes in plastic, put them in her mouth and transported them to her husband during a kiss. Cigarettes also have been discovered in dlapers of visiting infants; mothers who bring, them in know that "usually we don't pat down the babies," says Mr. Sanders.

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Ga. jail inmates burned by own smoking habit 

Two inmates at the Chatham County jail in coastal Georgia got burned by their own smoking habit when they started a fire trying to light a handmade cigarette with a spark from an electrical socket.

Both inmates were treated for minor burns after their cellmates quickly doused the fire with water, Sheriff's Deputy Ron Robinson said Wednesday. He said the jail banned smoking more than a decade ago, but it hasn't stopped inmates from improvising.

"Some of these guys have serious habits and cravings," Robinson said. "They try to smoke a lot of things ... lettuce, collard greens, turnip greens, whatever was served to them at lunch that day."

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Prison smoking bans to start today  

Smoking will be banned inside most of the State’s prisons today and limited to designated areas, prompting renewed calls for the State Government to crack down on a prisoner’s right to light up in jail.

The move, which will make all cells and units smoke-free, finally brings the prison system into line with other workplaces but health groups argue the changes do not go far enough.

Australian Council on Smoking and Health president Mike Daube welcomed the partial ban but warned that prisoners were not getting the same protection as the rest of the community.

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Ex-WVa. mayor pleads guilty to smuggling tobacco into prison 

Former Mill Creek Mayor Diane Currence will avoid jail time as part of an agreement in which she pleaded guilty to charges of delivering contraband to an inmate at Huttonsville Correctional Center.

Randolph County Magistrate George Riggleman sentenced Currence to a community service program. Both the charges Currence pleaded guilty to are misdemeanors, and other charges have been dropped.

Currence was accused of bringing tobacco and other substances to a prisoner along with her daughter Kathryn and her son Jason.

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Prisons to ban smoking 

Prisons and other state correctional facilities across Virginia plan to ban tobacco use by February 2010.

Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said smoking is banned or there are designated smoking areas for staff at eight prisons so far, according to The Associated Press.

Patrick Henry Correctional Unit No. 28 in Horsepasture is not one of them, Traylor said last week. Tobacco use is permitted there, he said, but only until Feb. 1.

Then, the tobacco ban “affects everyone, with no exceptions,” Traylor said.

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Convict in 'cigarette break out' 

An armed robber escaped from a secure psychiatric hospital in London during a cigarette break and robbed a shop at knife-point, a jury has heard.

John Slavin, 44, was eight months into a sentence at Springfield Hospital in Wandsworth, south-west London, for robbing a Gloucester Road bookshop.

But Southwark Crown Court heard that in March 2008 he escaped through a fence - and raided the bookshop a second time.

His mental illness meant he was not fit to make a plea, a judge said.

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