In February, Georgia lawmakers created a study committee to think about whether people in the state’s prison system, at least 25 of whom have been murdered so far in 2024, are safe or whether legislative changes might help. On August 28, at the second meeting of the Senate Supporting Safety and Welfare of All Individuals in Department of Corrections Facilities Study Committee, Senator Kim Jackson (D) asked the million-dollar question: Would it reduce violence and contraband if prisoners had access to cigarettes?
Jackson said the idea came from a loved one of someone currently in Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) custody who’d been sanctioned for contraband tobacco possession.
“If people had access to cigarettes—which they would have on the outside, cigarettes are not illegal,” Jackson asked, “do you see a relationship between contraband tobacco and crime?”
GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver sees a relationship between the 47,000-plus of us currently in state custody and anything that sounds like it costs money.
“It goes back to, you know, the secondhand smoke issue and health-related issues that you’re going to have to pay for on the back end, allowing the tobacco to be inside the prisons … the side effects that come with tobacco smoking,” Oliver replied. “So you kind of hear that point, but there’s also long-term effects.”
“Smokeless tobacco is a thing—is that not available as well?”
“Do we have smoke cessation programs available to folks who come in with that addiction?” Jackson asked. “Smokeless tobacco is a thing—is that not available as well? Are we concerned about mouth cancer, is that the problem?”
“Yeah, health effects. Long-term, you know, we’re paying a lot already,” Oliver said. “So you put that on top of those long-term effects for taking care of those individuals. Again, they’re coming to us a lot younger, they’re staying with us a lot longer, and to be aiding that wouldn’t be beneficial to the state.”
The discussion never turned to vapes, even though it’s normal to see a small number of them sprinkled into the more popular contraband such as cell phones, tobacco and more cell phones.
GDC purported to have a smoking cessation program, at least for some people in custody. The department did not respond to Filter‘s inquiry about such a program.
After prison systems across the country banned tobacco products, GDC was one where the contraband tobacco market remained robust. Staff aren’t permitted to smoke on the premises, but have certain designated smoking areas.
GDC officials told the committee that most of the contraband comes from visitors, despite the “propaganda” in the media. At least 360 GDC employees have been arrested for bringing in contraband since 2018, not including an additional 25 who were fired but not charged.
GDC is on track for a record body count in 2024. Homicides are up. Suicides are up. Anecdotally overdoses are up, at least in the medium-security facility where I’m currently incarcerated. More than 200 people in GDC custody have died since the beginning of the year, nearly half of whom have an as-yet undetermined cause of death. (GDC also appeared to confirm, very tentatively, that the June shooting deaths in Smith State Prison was the first incident of gun violence by someone incarcerated in a GDC facility.)
“If our prisons were fully staffed, at 100 percent, what do you imagine would be the contraband issue at that point?”
To end the bloodbath, the state needs to improve the physical conditions of its prisons. Not so that we’re more comfortable, but so that corrections officers stop walking off the job immediately after they start. As Oliver put it, “We don’t have a recruitment problem; we have a retention problem.”
“If our prisons were fully staffed, at 100 percent, what do you imagine would be the contraband issue at that point?” asked Jackson. She was referring to unsupervised prisoners regularly climbing up on the roof where drones would land carrying 50-lb payloads, or unsupervised prisoners popping out windows to simply pull the hovering drones inside.
“It probably wouldn’t be there as much, but it’d still be there I think,” replied GDC Assistant Commissioner Ahmed Holt. “There’s been contraband in prisons for as long as I can remember … they find a way to get something in.”
I did enjoy Majority Whip Randy Robertson weighing in to say explain how cigarettes could be used as currency, and so letting us have them could create a dichotomy of “haves and have-nots,” as if non-contraband smokes would be the thing that brings sex work and debt into a locked box of people crammed with people being slowly deprived of everything.
Allowing us to have cigarettes or less-harmful alternatives like vapes would not, of course, mean an end to needless deaths entirely. But the health harms Oliver is so concerned with are currently worse than if we had access to regulated cigarettes, let alone vapes or other smokeless options. There would be less contraband. Less violence. Less debt. Less suffering.
The committee had its first meeting August 23, and will disband by the end of 2024, having thought about us enough by then. Senator Jackson, thank you for asking. Everyone else, good riddance.
Image of senators Randy Robertson (left) and Kim Jackson via Georgia House of Representatives/YouTube