Staff at Canberra's prison are concerned that a recommendation released last week to ban smoking at the jail could spark a riot.
The recommendation to ban smoking by the end of this year was included in the Blueprint for Change report released this week by an independent oversight committee chaired by former Victorian police chief Christine Nixon and including members of the custodial staff's union, the CPSU.
Speaking to The Canberra Times on the condition of anonymity, corrections staff members said that while prisoners' smoking at the jail was a health and safety risk, the even greater fear was that the transition to a no-smoking jail, which would bring the Alexander Maconochie Centre in line with most other prisons around the country, would certainly generate significant inmate unrest and potentially start another riot.
"Tobacco is used as a currency inside the jail, and smoking is seen as a way of easing the boredom," one custodial officer said.
"To make it [the AMC] a no-smoking prison would have to be very carefully handled over a lengthy period, and they [prison management] don't have a good record of managing small challenges [and especially] not one on a scale like this.
"Even small disputes can turn nasty inside. A big thing like this could really blow up."
In 2015, a decision by the Victorian government to ban smoking in its prisons sparked a 15-hour riot at Melbourne's metropolitan remand centre.
The Nixon report's recommendation linked a smoking ban to programs to support staff during the implementation period, revisions to the detainee discipline policy, and a revised incentives and earned privileges policy.
Over two-thirds of the Canberra jail population is made up of smokers, according to data gathered in the 2019 Healthy Prison Review. Smoking in prisons across other Australian jurisdictions is totally banned - with the exception of Western Australia, which allows prisoners to smoke in outdoor areas.
One-quarter of the AMC prisoners surveyed said they would give up smoking if they received proper support.
The health issues associated with smoking in the jail were seen as one issue by prison staff. Separate but allied to it was the presence of lighters, which are seen as a major safety issue.
Fires have been lit in almost every major incident involving prisoner unrest inside the jail, including a riot in November 2020 involving 27 prisoners who armed themselves with makeshift weapons and caused millions of dollars in damage to facilities, some of which is still being repaired.
In the most recent critical incident from May last year, detailed in a report tabled in the ACT Assembly by the independent Inspector of Correctional Services, fires were lit in the double-storey high security unit while prisoners were drunk on "home brew", and several began to riot.
The report described how at about 6pm "the officers' station was set on fire and quickly became engulfed in flames".
"The unit filled with thick black smoke which obscured vision on some of the CCTV cameras. At 6:05pm, a Code Red was called," the report said.
About 20 minutes later, the prisoners lit another fire elsewhere.
"At approximately 6:23pm detainees set fire to cell 3 on the lower level of the unit, using clothing and bedding to ignite the mattresses," it said.
"Cell mattresses are fire retardant but not fireproof and when set alight create significant amounts of smoke."
Plans to end smoking at the AMC and the ACT's former Periodic Detention Centre at Symonston were first raised in a government report in May 2017.
