Prisoners, smoking, healthcare

Originally posted at Right Truth

Should criminals in jails and prisons be allowed to smoke? Think before you answer. Tennessee's 16 prisons, with 19,000 prisoners and 5,000 guards, will be smoke-free by June, an edict from legislators who in 2005 banned tobacco use in state-owned buildings. Some prisons have already started.

Will there be a savings for the prison systems in health care for the inmates? Will the inmates be healthier? Prisoners use cigarettes as currency, in lieu of money. What will they use now that the cigarettes are gone? Prisoners are not happy but there has been no violent backlash. Can you say 'cold turkey'?

Cigarettes, a uniform and highly prized commodity, stood in for the dollar at Turney Center Industrial Prison here, which phased out smoking Oct. 1.

In a barter system familiar from prison movies, inmates calculated the value of other items based on their equivalent in smokes, inmate Michael Stanfield said. ...

"The prison market has been in disarray because we don't have a standard anymore."

He thought stamps might be the next commodity, but nothing's come out on top, Stanfield said. Officials at the rural prison and farm speculate that food items from the commissary may emerge as the next currency.The Tennessean

According to the above report in The Tennessean, an estimated 80 percent of them addicted to nicotine and more than 25 other states have similar bans, according to information from the American Correctional Association.

Tennessee has spent about $2,000 to offer classes on quitting. The state also offers inmates costly nicotine lozenges at the commissaries. At $29 for 48 pieces, they would cost an inmate earning 50 cents an hour more than a week's wages.

The costs to states for prisoner health care is enormous. Some have tried privatized prison health services. In South Carolina 'audit found numerous incidents of inadequate provision of medication, no discharge planning for the mentally ill, inadequately trained staff, and lax monitoring, and concluded : privatized prison health care has failed in South Carolina and throughout the United States, uncovering the hidden costs, lawsuits, and medical abuses of privatized prison health care.' (read more on the report)

How much should be spent on health care for prisoners? Should they be put on organ donor lists just like every law-abiding citizen, or should the honest citizens be placed ahead of prisoners. I know what I think, what about you?