John Key

Wellington, June 29 NZPA - Prisoners don't like being in jail anyway and banning smoking isn't likely to have a huge impact on their behaviour, Prime Minister John Key says.

"Obviously there's a risk some prisoners will get grizzly about it," he said yesterday after Corrections Minister Judith Collins had announced the ban would take effect a year from now.

"They're probably fairly grizzly that they're in prison as well...I think if someone is going to be volatile it's going to be about more than giving up cigarettes."

Inmates serving sentences now will have 12 months to give up and after that it will be cold turkey, as it will be for any new inmates.

Ms Collins said stopping them smoking would make prisons healthier places for staff and inmates.

At present prisoners can smoke in their cells and some outdoor areas.

"Studies of air quality in United States prisons show that staff and prisoners can be exposed to 12 times the levels of second hand smoke than in the home of an indoor smoker," she said.

About 5700 prisoners are smokers, roughly two-thirds of the prison population, and Corrections Association president Beven Hanlon said while the union supported the policy there could be tensions with addicted prisoners.

"People coming off nicotine can be very unpredictable, can be very anxious and aggressive, and we're going to have a large part of our prison population going through that and we're going to have to manage them," he said.

Former inmates interviewed by TVNZ said there would be fights and a tobacco black market.

But Mr Key and Ms Collins say the ban has been applied in successfully in Australia and there will be programmes to help prisoners quit.

Researcher and social commentator Celia Lashlie told NZPA she didn't "believe for a minute" that the ban was a health and safety move, and it would push already-volatile prisons closer to major incidents.

"I think it's being introduced because the Government's wanting to push ahead on double bunking and they're trying to save themselves from having the debate about the complexity of having to put an inmate who smokes with an inmate who doesn't smoke," she said.

"They've suddenly become very aware of being sued and they say they're aware of possibly being sued by prison staff but again I don't think that's the case at all or they would have moved before now...

"It's not about 'will it work?', it's about the bullshit, what the policy's really about."

She said the ban had the potential to "raise the number of incidents against [prison] staff".

"You'll introduce another layer of policing that staff have to do to get another level of desperation into the lives of already desperate and disconnected people...

"I think we're on the verge of some major incidents anyway -- we can't keep doing what we're doing, we can't keep screwing the system down in the way that we're doing and not expect that something will blow, and I think that this will help blow it."