The Prison Tobacco Ban: Manifest and Latent Failures of a Social Control Policy

Prison managers across the United States and in Europe now enforce a policy, which bans the use of tobacco products by prisoners and prison staff, while on prison grounds. Criminalizing the use of tobacco has dramatically shifted the way that prisoners and prison staff interact with each other, and how they do business as part of both the formal and informal social organizations of the prison community. Historically, cigarettes have been used as currency, but today, nicotine has become the drug of choice and the cost of a pack of cigarettes can range from $50 to $125. For the first time since the prisoner social organization was allowed to form, prison staff now controls the black market economy. It has been reported that prison staff are using violence against both prisoners and other prison staff, as they seek to protect their corner of the newly defined black market economy. The ban has produced adverse affects on prisoner health, institutional security, and those processes in place to help facilitate successful prisoner reintegration and, produced new cost for taxpayers associated with housing prisoners beyond their original release date.