Smokers can no longer enjoy an after-dinner cigarette at Jeffersonville restaurants and bars. But if they get arrested on the way home, they can light up in the Clark County Jail while they wait for a court date.
The Jeffersonville City Council’s 2005 smoking ordinance prohibits smoking in restaurants, government buildings and workplaces, but the ordinance has no authority over the rules and regulations at the jail.
Indiana statutes give Clark County Sheriff Danny Rodden complete control over the operations of the Michael L. Becher Adult Corrections Complex, as with all sheriffs across the state. Though the Jeffersonville ordinance does regulate smoking in places of employment, restricting the operations within the jail is beyond its reach.
Though the jail had been nonsmoking, Rodden began to allow smoking in the jail about a third of the way into his first term as sheriff last year.
When he became sheriff, there were “so many behavioral problems,” Rodden said. Not all prisoners are allowed to smoke, but inmates with good behavior are given the option.
Allowing inmates to smoke in some areas of the jail cuts down on fighting and contraband sales, Rodden said.
“We’ve had no complaints (about smoking), from inmates or otherwise,” he said.
The new jail allows inmates to choose whether they reside in a smoking or nonsmoking pod.
But two Jeffersonville City Council members that came down on either side of the citywide smoking ordinance were able to agree on one thing, the ordinance should be applied to everyone.
“It needs to cover the entire gamut,” said Councilwoman Connie Sellers, who is against the ordinance. “If you’re not going to allow one person, you shouldn’t allow it for anybody.”
Councilman Keith Fetz has a different view of the ordinance, supporting the partial ban on smoking.
“Unless there is completely separate ventilation systems, you are endangering not only inmates, but officers and staff,” Fetz said. “It’s the same as saying you can pee in one side of the pool but not the other.
“You see a (smoke-free) trend developing across the United States,” he said.
Very few jails in Indiana allow smoking, according to Douglas Gosser, executive director of the Indiana Sheriffs Association. The Indiana Department of Correction has outlawed smoking in state prisons, as has Floyd County Sheriff Darrell Mills.
The Floyd County Jail allowed smoking before Mills was elected sheriff last year, but he decided to go smoke-free.
Rodden has a brand new facility, so he doesn’t have to address like concerns, Mills said. He said one of the main reasons he chose to stop smoking at the jail was because of maintenance issues.
“All our operations are computer generated — the pods, doors, and it was a maintenance nightmare,” he said. “It was already causing problems [when he was elected].”
Mills also said with inmate housing full, it was unfair to women prisoners who didn’t have the opportunity to be in an area that was smoke-free, though the men did.
And with smokers setting off fire alarms at the jail and the fire department routinely sending trucks to the jail, the bill to taxpayers started to add up.
Mills gave inmates 90 days to quit before cutting them off, and initially allowed smokeless tobacco. The smokeless tobacco was soon prohibited as well, though, because inmates were drying it out and rolling it up in toilet paper to make homemade cigarettes, Mills said.
He said there were some behavioral and contraband problems when smoking ceased, but he tried “to look at the overall operation and do the fair thing.”
“When you get arrested, you give up a certain amount of freedoms,” he said. “They need to make a choice — just don’t break the law and you can smoke all you want.”
Adult smoking rates
In 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 45.1 million adults in the U.S. — or about 20.9 percent of the country’s adult population — were smokers. States with the highest percentages of adult smokers are:
• Kentucky – 28.7 percent
• Indiana – 27.3
• Tennessee – 26.8
• West Virginia – 26.6
• Oklahoma – 25.1
• Alaska – 25.0
• Alabama – 24.8
• Mississippi – 23.7
• Pennsylvania – 23.7
• Arkansas – 23.5
• National average – 20.9
— Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
THERE’s ALWAYS AN EXCEPTION
• The Clark County Jail isn’t the only site within Jeffersonville city limits that might not have to heed the restrictions of the city’s smoking ban. Former Jeffersonville City Attorney Les Merkley said last year that if riverboat gaming came to the city, that venue likely would not have to follow the city’s smoking ban because state law gives the Indiana Gaming Commission nearly complete authority over gaming operations.
“I don’t know if the Gaming Commission would even recognize” the city’s anti-smoking ordinance, Merkley said at the time.
And even if the local ordinance is applicable to a casino, a gaming operation might already fit within an exemption for bars, because gaming patrons must be at least 21 and casinos serve alcohol.
In June 2007, both the Evansville City Council and Vanderburgh County Commissioners approved anti-smoking legislation, but both ordinances exempted establishments that cater to the 21-and-older crowd, meaning that Casino Aztar there is unaffected by the laws.
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